


Vanta Black

by TooOldForThis76



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Dragon Ball Z - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 77,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22621927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooOldForThis76/pseuds/TooOldForThis76
Summary: Bulma Briefs is in a tough place in life--no longer the princess of Capsule Corp, stuck in a dead end relationship with Yamcha and much like everyone else on earth, stuck deep in the cycle of poverty, but news reports of a mysterious entity known as "the void" terrorizing the Marijuku neighborhood of West City has Bulma intrigued . . .
Relationships: Bulma Briefs/Vegeta, Bulma Briefs/Vegeta/Yamcha
Comments: 135
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> \----------------------
> 
> I thought I would make an attempt at a AU :) This one's going to be a bit of a superhero/Noir/slow burn kind of thing, so I'm not sure how people are going to feel about it, but hopefully you will enjoy :) ! 
> 
> (if you're looking for Vegebul smut, check out my other work "Earth Vermin") 
> 
> \----------------------------

**_~~ Vanta Black ~~ _ **

One:

“It’s like looking at your dead father’s soul, but that soul is fading right before your eyes, and you know there’s nothing you can do about it, you just stand there, watching, helpless, absorbed in his behemoth shadow, but that shadow has already begun to decay.” Bulma said, as much to herself as to Roshi and Oolong as they stood before Capsule Corp in the last few minutes of allotted light, “Then the darkness isn’t so bad. Kinda wish it were a little more black.”

Bulma raised the cigarette to her lips and took a draw. She kept her eyes downcast as the lights in the tower began to go out floor by floor, leaving only the Capsule Corp logo in blue phosphorous glow at the top of the building, its weak light dull as an eye that had seen too much trouble in its old age, weak and tired, wisdom frosted over by apathy. “Well, that’s that.” Oolong said as he pushed his hooves into the belly pocket of his hoodie, “Goodbye Friday, hello long, dark weekend.”

“I don’t know why we all come out here.” Bulma said as she blew the smoke out slowly from her lips, “it’s just stupid nighttime lights. Not like we don’t have lights all throughout the rest of the week.”

Oolong shrugged, “It’s a community thing. Call it the last piece of happiness we have. Everybody’s broke and bored, and they don’t wanna go to bed. I mean c’mon, it’s only 6:00.”

“Yeah, I get that, but . . . They treat it like it’s some sort of festival-like ‘thing’. It’s not a thing to celebrate, it’s just my boss being a prick.” 

“Now don’t say that. Goku did what he had to do to keep us all in the modern age.” Master Roshi said as he struggled to his feet off of the ragged picnic blanket on the piebald lawn, “Without him, we might not have had any kind of civilization to speak of, not after all we’ve been through. And we may be broke but at least YOU have a job, Bulma.”

Bulma tilted her head towards the turtle hermit and tried to smile. She swallowed the lump in her throat and raised the cigarette to her mouth again, pausing as she parted her lips, observing Oolong and Roshi with a heavy heart. The old man’s limp was getting worse. She recognized the rhythm of his walk, the sure, steady pace—he was trying very hard to stay within a particular rhythm to keep ahead of the pain, to keep in line with the rest of the departing crowd without getting ahead or behind and risk messing up this particular walking rhythm, but as bodies fumbled around in the dark, and people fumbled for picnic blankets and tiny, crying bodies demanding to be picked up, his walk went out of rhythm, aggravating his spine. He grabbed the small of his back and cried out. Oolong took his black cloven hoof and set it in the center of the old man’s back as he moaned through the sudden pain. “Yeah, I have a job.” Bulma muttered to herself as the two of them disappeared into the swallowing crowd, “Guess I should be grateful.”

Bulma turned around and threw her leg over the side of her bright red Capsule Cycle. She slid the starting switch with her thumb and quickly slapped the palm of her other hand down on the instrument panel to hide the light. “Aww Damnit. Totally forgot about dim mode.” She said. She quickly hooked the finger of her index finger on the small plastic lip at the top of each module and pulled down the mute screen, muffling the gawdy pastel lights peppering her older cycle, the cycle of a bygone era. She looked all around herself for pedestrians, cops, then pushed forward with her feet until the cycle sensed the curb. Immediately, the gentle, cushiony mag lev engaged, and with the slow swipe of Bulma’s hand, it lurched gently forward, following the implied gentleness of her gesture, idling a respectful pace behind the wall of individuals marching towards the city apartments. In the long, crooked mirror that jutted out from the bike’s nose, something caught the corner of Bulma’s eye that made her heart drop to her knees. She raised her hand and hovered it just above the controls. She looked for some small opening anywhere to the side or through the herd of human sheep, but as her hand hovered there, shaking, heart beating furiously, and the unthinkable act of mowing through bodies to escape threatened to throw her hand out and wave the bike up to its highest speed in a blink, the muted red and blue came flashing up and consumed the entire area of the mirror, forcing Bulma’s hand down to bring the bike to a full stop. She took a deep breath and covered her eyes with the only hand wearing a fingerless glove and moved her lips to the mantra oh no oh no oh no oh no as she exhaled. She wrapped both hands around the handlebars and braced herself before turning to see a familiar face just over her shoulder tapping figures into a darkened screen. “Officer Krillin,” She said somewhere between disappointment and relief, “Look, I’m sorry, I—I know. I know the rules. I just made a simple mistake.”

“Two.”

“Two? Two what?”

“Two simple mistakes. Your instrument panel and the cigarette.”

“What?! I put that out before I even got on the bike!!”

“But not before the lights went out!”

“I was finishing it!! I-I put it out on the ground I have the butt in my pocket and everything—so it took me a minute so what?! I was trying to watch over my friends!”

“Look it’s nothing personal Bulma, but the rules are the rules.” Officer Krillin said as he placed his thumb on the tablet, “Sign here.”

“Can I at least see my ticket before I agree to it?”

“Well it’s not up to you to agree to it,” Krillin said with a brief raise of his eyebrows, “You just have to acknowledge that you received it.”

“$200 Zeni?!”

“$100 for each violation.”

“Krillin!! That’s insane!!! I can’t afford this!!” Bulma squeaked, her lower lip quivering slightly as her eyes felt the depth of the numbers digging deep into her already damaged bank account.

“You should have listened to me the last week. Capsule is getting serious about these weekend light violations and doesn’t care if you’re an employee or not. Capsule—”

“—needs its employees to be model citizens, yeah, I know.” Bulma said as she reluctantly squashed her thumb down to the box next to his, “guess we have to be poor too, just like everyone else. Look, I’ll make you a deal—knock off the 2nd violation and . . . and I’ll get you the number to that girl you like in robotics, the one with the blonde hair?”

“Do you want to add bribery as your 3rd violation tonight?” Krillin said with a menacing point of his stylus towards the tablet. 

“Well why do—” She said as she threw her hands into the air, “Why is it only the human part of the city that has to follow this?? What about Marijuku or any of those other places the Namekians occupy?”

Krillin cocked his eyebrow and drew down the corner of his mouth, “Don’t be racist.”

“That’s not raci—Ooo, OOOO!” Bulma growled as she pressed her lips together and bit her tongue. She planted her hands on her hips. She threw her head back and rolled it around on her shoulders, rotating until her eyes met those of the small man in the ill fitting police uniform. “HOW is that racist? I’m not racist I’m just saying they have light—look! Look over there!” Bulma said as she threw her hand palm up in the direction of East street, “Are you going to write the streetlamps a ticket??!”

Krillin pinched his thumb and forefinger together and placed them where his nose should have been, “You know, they have their own kind of darkness over there, or haven’t you been watching the news?”

“The darkness, give me a break.” Bulma replied, “That whole story sounds about as credible as the Yardrat flu. Remember last year when THAT was all over the news??” 

“Ordinarily I’d agree with you but . . . ” Krillin said, tilting his head until the brim of his hat hid his face, “A few days ago, someone managed to capture video of it on security cam. Of course they briefed all of us on it at the station, and I’m telling you Bulma there wasn’t a soul in that room that wasn’t in awe. it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Just a black void of nothingness, crawling across screen, moving in on some poor sap on the street like a predator. We had to slow the video down frame by frame just to zero in on it, and even slowed down, it looked so unreal that it was almost like someone drew it into the video—there was no shadow, no shine as it passed under the streetlamps, it was like it sucked all the light out of everything around it. Like a living, breathing black hole consuming everything in its path. We still don’t know what happened to the guy that it took.”

“There is this little thing called special effects,” Bulma replied, “It could have very well have been drawn in by someone trying to cash in on all this sensationalism.”

“If it were special effects, it’s better than anything I’ve ever seen in a movie.” Krillin said with a shiver, “Besides, darkness or no darkness, that side of town also has CRIME, Bulma, and you’d do well enough alone staying on our side of the city.”

“WE have crime too, you know!”

“No, not like that. That place is like a warzone. There’s a reason why Goku keeps the lights on over there.”

“And if I were to push this hunk of junk over there and THEN start it up, would I have got a ticket?!”

“Well, as a human, you’d be asking for it.” He said, “You know how they are. If I wasn’t an armed officer, I wouldn’t set a single solitary foot over there.”

“psh ‘How they are’--who’s being racist now?” Bulma said as she crossed her arms under her breasts.

“Ugh look, I get what you’re saying, but that was part of the deal—we don’t govern what they do, and if Goku says they get lights—”

“Uh huh then they get lights,” Bulma said as she bobbed her head sarcastically to each word before settling into a sulking pose. “So . . . are you still coming over on Saturday for RomRiot? You know _he_ is going to ask.”

“yeah yeah yeah. Tell him I’m taking him to a job interview afterwards, then we’ll see how bad he wants to hang out with me.”

“I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”

“That’s what I don’t understand you, Bulma. Why do you put up with that? You’re Capsule Corp’s chief product developer. You’re in good with the big boss, you gotta make good money, but here you are worried about a $200 zeni ticket while he’s at home probably baked out of his gourd on mountain herb! Can’t you hook up with somebody who has better ambitions than just sponging off of everybody else?”

“We’ve been together a long time, I dunno. Just seems like a shame to give up on him now.” Bulma said with a shrug, “He says he’s trying.”

“Well, suit yourself.” Krillin replied. He gave his long time friend a good look up and down from her tattered red sneakers all the way up to her brilliant blue hair and said, “You know, maybe if you talk to the big boss—”

“The big boss . . . . is not as much of a friend to me as everyone thinks. You know what, for all the hero worship people place on him, he’s changed. He changed and I am trying to hold on to . . . some modicum of goodness in him and in, well, you know who, but . . . you know what I’m tired. I need to get home.”

“Well you were ever the type to need a hero, I hope whoever it is lights up your life and treats you like royalty.”

“Thanks Krillin but . . . I think we both know I just gotta be my own hero.” she said, her words fading softly into the muggy, suffocating evening air. 

Krillin shook his head sad and slow as he returned to his bike. He shared a glance down the warm glow of East street with his long time friend before both turned away from each other and parted ways—he for the police station, she for the tiny round house in the darkest corner of West city that she shared with Roshi, Oolong and in theory, Yamcha, who, as usual, was not waiting in the kitchen like the pig and the old man typically were, and was also not waiting in her bed, or anywhere in the home for which he was supposed to be paying rent. She knew this before she even turned the knob to the front door, but it made her heart sink none the less to see evidence of him all around in the form of paper wrappers tossed carelessly on the couch and empty chip bags and crumbs and papers left on the table and the floor but without so much as a _hi, how are you, how was your day_. She sighed as she tossed the keys to her bike to the kitchen counter. She pulled her tablet from her pocket and glanced at her bank account. “Shit.” She said, plowing her hand through her bright blue hair as four new charges presented themselves on her account, “Shit!! How am I going to do this?”

“Bulma? Hey am I disturbing you?” 

“No Oolong it’s ok.” She said as she slid the tablet back into her pocket, “What’s up?”

“Hey um, So I just wanted to let you know, Roshi and I made a few bucks down at the square today. Thought it might help.” He said, his cloven hoof presenting a twenty piece Zenni, “It’s not much but, you know, we want to do what we can to contribute.”

“Roshi shouldn’t . . . you know his back is so . . . “ She said, fighting through the words catching in her throat, “Oh, thanks you guys. That is really sweet of you. I really do appreciate it.”

“Cheer up, kid. We’re gonna beat this.” Oolong said as he stuffed his hooves back into the belly pocket of his hoodie. “So it’s a dark time, so what? One way or the other, we’ll make it through, eh?”

“Right. This helps, really it does.” She said as she closed her fingers around the paper money.

“Little fuel, little fast food . . . we’re going back out there tomorrow so who knows, maybe we’ll make enough to pay a bill!”

“Was Yamcha out there with you today?”

Oolong averted his eyes. He made tiny circles on the floor with his slightly outstretched hoof and hung his head, “I um . . . no.” 

“Figures as much.”

“Haven’t seen him all day,”

“Ok.”

“Sure could smell him when we got back from downtown tonight though. If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a thousand times before not to hotbox the hell out of that herb in the house. This place ain’t that big and I worry the old man’s gonna get breathing problems with all that smoke trapped in such a tiny space.”

“I hear ya.”

“Say what took you so long getting back here tonight anyways?”

“Ran into somebody I knew.”

“Ah, good! Always nice to end the night on a high note. Well, my hamhocks are cooked so I’m going to bed. See ya in the morning!” 

_A high note …_

_…_ and before her sadness could squelch the idea, before it had the chance to say the idea was stupid, immature, pointless, or whatever other objection it may have had, her bag was on the kitchen table, hand dashing into the gap between two zippers, fingers wrapping around the familiar crescent shape of headphones. She carried them to her simple bed—a mattress that sat directly on the floor, a pillow, soft fleece blankets with the Capsule corp logo all over, a prize from a company outing 3 years ago when the world was only just becoming shadowy and harsh--and unraveled the gangly, tangled up wire. Without even changing out of her street clothes, without brushing her teeth or cleaning up the crumbs, the bags, the papers, or the wet towels left on the bathroom floor by Yamcha, she stretched out on the bed, plugged her headphones into her tablet and made herself very still before pressing play. Smooth synth notes immersed her dry and dying soul in the richness of a sad song. She lit the last cigarette of the day, eyes searching through the bamboo slats of her bedroom window to the clouds made noctilucent by the glow of the other side of the city, wishing, desiring in some odd, inexplicable way, that the sky was just a little more sincerely and truly and deeply black. 


	2. Saturday in Marijuku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma's Saturday is full of chores, but adventure is calling! What new experiences await at Frieza's?
> 
> \--------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Some familiar faces make their debut in this chapter :) 
> 
> True confession: I greatly enjoy writing Frieza >:) I think he and I could hang in real life
> 
> \----------------------------------------------

2.

Saturday morning came bright and brutal with sunbeams stabbing Bulma through the slats. She rolled off of the mattress and onto the floor, squinting, groping for the alarm, slapping the broad underside of her hand over the snooze button just as the clock began to squawk. “Goddamnit. Sorry Yamcha, I forgot to—” She said, pausing as she looked over her shoulder to the side of the bed where the covers were still neatly pulled over the pillow. 

Upstairs, Roshi and Oolong were already seated at the kitchen table along with Tien, who had brought his usual Saturday morning treat: a bag of not quite stale bagels, his take-home from the bread store in which he worked. It had become a Saturday ritual—everyone together, drinking coffee, eating toasted bread, Tien in his short sleeves, all his muscles hard and well defined, telling stories of the street urchin students of his dojo that he had thrown himself into mentoring ever since Chiaotzu passed away. Somehow Bulma understood the need. His face fell almost as soon as it brightened with every story he told, but there was enough laughter and distraction to keep pitying eyes from noticing the fact that she always took one more bagel and wrapped it in a napkin, setting it aside for _him_. 

After the Saturday ritual was complete, it was time for Master Roshi’s doctor’s appointments which Bulma and Oolong dutifully attended—Oolong more than Bulma as Bulma was merely the driver of the Capsule-owned cycle and couldn’t stand to wait in the patient lounges. They carefully sandwiched the old man between them after each appointment and drove gently over the rough roads of a city hushed by the lack of weekend electric. And every specialist and every general practitioner would say the same thing: it was only a matter of time. A man of his age was lucky to be alive. That he was in remarkably good condition except for the thing they could not fix. 

And when the shopping was done, and the laundry, and the visits Oolong insisted on making to the local pawn shops and loan companies despite their refusal to negotiate on his debts, it was late afternoon, leaving the sun bleeding its last light in clots of oozing orange through the serpentine streets, too late for naps, too late for working on hobbies or art or dreams. Bulma, Roshi and Oolong returned home, each entering the house with a small bag of groceries or a small bag of laundry or the worn and faded leather bag they used to carry around the detergent and Roshi’s medical file. As they entered the home single file—Oolong in front, Roshi in the middle and Bulma in the back, Bulma perked her head up as soon as she heard Oolong’s distinctive scoff, a dead giveaway that Yamcha was home. Her heart raced as the pig shook his head, giving a cough and a wave of his hoof in front of his snout as he passed by the kitchen. She held her elbow out to help Master Roshi up the steps, her eyes sliding to their furthest corners to steal a glimpse of Yamcha seated at the kitchen table under a thick, hazy cloud of Mountain Herb as she walked the old man to the living room and onto the couch. She gave him the remote and a blanket, a pillow and a magazine full of bikini babes despite the fact that he would pass out as soon as she left the room like he always did. She wrapped her arms around her midsection and entered the kitchen, systematically sealing shut the steel shutters that Yamcha, Korrin and Yajirobe had neglected to close in their baked state. “Awww babe …we were just getting ready to turn on the generator.”

“Good thing I’m here, I guess.” She replied quietly as Yajirobe pushed past her to plug his gaming tablet into the slightly less than legal power generator hidden under the kitchen sink, “I ran into Krillin, said he might stop by for RomRiot tonight.”

“Krilin’s a narc.” Yajirobe replied absently as he clicked through his start up menus.

Bulma raised an eyebrow, “You know, if you guys would have left the shutters open and Krillin would have just happened to stop by, he probably would have wrote us a ticket.”

Yamcha stared at Bulma vacantly. He wiped his hand down his face, struggling to find the words through the fog in his brain, “Uh heeyyyyyyyyyyy do we have any, like, snacks or anything?”

“Did you buy any snacks?”

“Ah no you know, I meant to get it but …. You know, I was out on the other side of town for an interview today, and . . . I put what I had left in the van, you know, and I kinda thought maybe you would pick something up cuz you know, you sometimes join us n stuff, I mean, like, we could make room.” He said as Yajirobe’s beady eyes suddenly flew to her as he scowled. 

Bulma thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. She wrapped her hand around the twenty Zeni in her pocket and gave it a squeeze. “That’s a you guys thing, really. I don’t . . . I don’t want to be the girl who just messes things up for you. You know actually, I was thinking maybe me and you could go do something, you know, maybe later, after RomRiot? It is Saturday night after all.”

Korrin suddenly snatched his tablet off the kitchen table, “Server’s ready! I’m in!”

Yajirobe and Yamcha each picked up their tablets. They picked and pecked around on the screen and jabbed each other with their elbows playfully as the game loaded on screen, Yamcha with a slow growing smile cracking across his face as his eyes fell deeper and deeper into the flashing lights of the screen. 

“I take it that’s a no?”

“Huh? What? Oh yeah, well . . . this is the first night of season pack 11, so . . . we’re gonna be busy for a while babe. Why don’t you run out and get us something, treat yourself on the way. That delivery guy . . . that delivery guy just doesn’t do it right.”

“What else do you expect for someone who works for 5 Zeni an hour?” Yajirobe snorted as he squashed his fat thumb down on the screen.

Yamcha gave a snicker, “That guy’s probably dumb as a . . . dumb as, like, a . . . . he’s probably pretty stupid.” 

“Yeah, well . . . 5 zeni an hour is still better than 0 zeni an hour.” Bulma said through her teeth as she walked around the table towards the door. 

“Well yeah but like, I’m worth more than that, you know. Smarter. I’ve got a degree n stuff.” Yamcha said as he slouched in his chair, “That’s why I don’t have a job, you know . . . 5 zeni an hour is just stupid. Hey, HEY!” He called out as Bulma entered the threshold of the kitchen, “He said I might be starting Monday.”

“Who did?”

“The guy I interviewed with today.”

“Good. That’s good.” She said with a faint nod.

“First paycheck I get babe, first paycheck I’m gonna take you out.” He said as the game on screen started to blip, calling his eyes back to it. “But yeah, could you pick us up some sodas? And maybe some chips? A pizza?”

_Maybe chips, maybe soda . . . maybe a big fat nothing is what you get_ Bulma thought to herself as she rode through the blue-black streets at a slow, safe pace. It was always surprising to see just how many people remained outside after sundown, after all the lights were gone, after all but the most ardent shops were closed. They passed by like phantoms in the night, ghosts of a forgotten society, male and female, holding hands, walking close, their shared smiles sparking the light in each other’s eyes, dimming Bulma’s heart in incremental shades. How many times? How many Saturdays had she spent just like this? How many more excuses? How much more carelessness about the shutters or the wrappers or the snacks or the money? How many more nights would be spent striving to get to the convenience store at the top of West Hill before the last light of a worn out day ran completely out?

Her hands squeezed the rubber coated handles of the bike. 

She sat and watched as the last light slipped away, and the closed sign was turned, and the lone man in the shop turned the key and walked away.

“Guess you’re not getting that soda.” She said to herself as she sat in the darkness, only taking her eyes off the shop when she realized all the early evening phantoms were gone. She was alone in the dark, alone in the utterly deserted streets, alone with a stained heart, hungry, angry, teetering on exhausted, but still within lay a determined itch. She positioned her bike in the center of the street and let the throttle open, letting the speed of the bike outpace the knee-jerk mental objection to doing something crazy. She drove up to the Capsule corp building, tracing the perimeter of its generous courtyard until her eyes could catch sight of it. Through darkened urban corridors she flew, past the clutter of darkened signs that so desperately begged for money during the day, standing as still and quiet and blank and mysterious as monoliths at night, to the one single street dotted with weak streetlamps. She followed their white spine down, down, and with every winding alley turned her mind grew more clear, her heart and body lighter—the deeper she went, the less her heart seemed troubled. Here in the deepest hollow of the Marijuku district of West City, the lights—the beautiful, soft glow of pink and blue neon lights, the bright, broad red of store signs, the sunny yellow of bar marquees and round, clear bulbs surrounding the posters on the cinema walls—all burned proud, with many Namekians up and about enjoying the soft summer air, exempted from the rules by their savior, the Super Saiyan, Bulma’s childhood friend, while the human suburbs obediently went to sleep. She slowed the cycle as green skin and cream colored robes came into view. The warm smile she had tried so hard to give Roshi the day before crept slowly across her face as she passed Namekian children playing in the street, chasing each other, chasing balls, chasing their newly adopted earth pets. But just as quickly as happiness had flared up, memories of the little Saiyan boy named Goku came flooding in, extinguishing the hopeful feeling with sadness of innocence lost. She toughened herself up inside as the distinctive long lines of brightly colored Mainjuku vending machines came into sight. She slowed the bike down just to look at them one by one, delighting in their variety and weirdness, the sight of Namekian writing invoking memories of Kami’s ship, the one she was too afraid to board when it was offered by Mr. Popo. She paused before a sandwich machine as her stomach began to growl. It seemed like such a cheap, shitty prize to place cash in them now, when she could have been one of the few humans to ever set foot in another world, _their_ world, the place where all their shared ills began. She turned her head and looked over her shoulder to the storefront across the street. A large, flat wooden sign hung over the door with Namekian writing, its windows were fogged over with condensation and in its sills sat large-frond palms that obscured the view inside. Bulma guided the bike over a little closer. Her stomach became a battle ground of nerves vs hunger as booths came into sight, and the rattling of fine china could be heard through opening and closing doors as customers entered and left. “it’s food, right? Just because it’s Namekian doesn’t mean it’s inedible.” She said as she dismounted. 

Bulma took a deep breath and entered the restaurant. She walked towards the empty bar with her hands in her pockets, fingers wrapped around her keyring so that the keys were thrust up in front of her knuckles, ready to strike whoever came too close, but the few patrons present remained in their booths deep in the shadows, their dull, slug-gray eyes following her in silence as they took sips of ligonoon tea, a strong sedative leaf brew made from the purple trees of Namek. The smell of it pervaded the place, and this somehow placed Bulma’s mind at ease. She slid onto a barstool and waited patiently for a waiter or a waitress or the host to show themselves, but was instead taken aback when a very much human-looking man burst through the kitchen doors, holding an empty tub used to buss tables. He wore bright green rubber kitchen gloves that reached all the way to his sinewy forearms and a white ribbed tank top, stained and holey with an apron covering his midsection like armor. He had a deep widow’s peak that dipped down sharp and long, almost touching the bridge of his nose. His wild and bushy black hair was collected into a bun on the top of his head, which was largely hidden by an ill-fitting hairnet. His muscles appeared every bit as obvious and well defined as Tien’s but slightly more compact to fit his short stature—it wasn’t something she wanted to notice in someone who appeared to be hostile, and a vagrant, but his physique was something preternatural, inhuman, something hard and prehistoric like a carnivorous dinosaur plucked from the bleeding edge of the fight against extinction, scars writing the plight of the last of the Neanderthals all over his exposed skin. He scowled at her with his brow pinching down hard over his one good eye, the other eye stiffly glaring a haunting shade of silver as if it were iced over and split in two. He broke their shared gaze by closing his eyes, giving his head an almost imperceptible shake as if to shake the image of her out of his head before going about gathering up beer bottles and teacups and plates and silverware and napkins from the other end of the bar. 

“Well well well, a late night human visitor, how delightful. And by delightful I actually mean how awkward. I don’t know what you’re looking for but you certainly won’t find it here.”

Bulma turned her head slightly and flinched at the sight of the creature who had so suddenly and silently appeared at the other side of the bar. It was short—shorter than the dishwasher—with a white face and sharp, straight lines dripping straight down from its red, heavily lined eyes. “I . . . don’t know that I’m looking for anything. Just looking for someplace to be, you know? I mean, am I not supposed to be in here?”

“Well I’m not going to kick you out—it’s too late at night and I don’t want the bother.”

“Are you the host or the waiter or …?”

“Owner.” He replied with a slight growl, “Frieza’s the name. The locals knew me as Emperor Frieza before we all ended up here, and now . . . now all I am Emperor of is steamed buns and this dank swill that makes the Namekians lose their heads. It’s a hard life but I make do. And you are?”

“A customer.”

“Well if I’m going to have another monkey in the joint I ought to know what it’s name is.”

“Bulma. Bulma Briefs. I’m a she, not an it.”

“Oh you humans and your gender constructs. I’d rather just refer to all of you as _it_ just to keep things simple.” Frieza said as his tail roiled side to side behind him, “alright, fine, Bulma Briefs, you’re a she, happy now?”

“I’d be happier if I had something to eat.” She said as the dishwasher slapped a rag on the bar and wiped it down vigorously. 

“Oh I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we don’t have any monkey chow here.” Frieza replied with a trace of a wicked smile upon his lips, “I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to the dark side of town for that.”

“I’ll have . . . whatever you feed him.” Bulma said with a nod towards the dishwasher, who paused and slid his eye to its far corner, turning his head just slightly over his shoulder as if it were the first time anyone had ever addressed him directly.

“Him? Oh come now, we wouldn’t want the two of you fighting over what’s in the garbage can. I get quite enough of that from the cats that live in the alley.”

“But you do have SOMETHING edible by humans, right? I mean, what else would he—”

“Grilled cheese and beer. That’s what we have, take it or leave it.”

“Grilled cheese and beer . . . actually sounds really good.”

“I doubt it will be.” Frieza said, tucking his arms into his pits as his tail flicked and curled, “Monkey, put it on for the girl.”

The dishwasher switched his face back and forth between Bulma and Frieza. He slapped his rag into the tub and dropped it on the bar, sending soap and beer suds into the air before slapping the door to the kitchen open and angrily rattling through pots and pans and plastic bags. 

“Geez what’s his problem?”

“Hmm? You’ll have to excuse his rude behavior. The poor dear is blind in one eye and DEAF in both ears,” he said with a hiss over his shoulder towards the kitchen, “Hard worker though. Spends all his time here from sunup to sundown. Couldn’t run the place without him.”

“Well . . . he could stand to be a little friendlier.” She said as she drew a cigarette from its box, “Is it alright if I smoke in here?”

Frieza flitted his eyes and leaned against the bar, tucking his fist under his tiny chin. “Poison yourself however you’d like. We’re all going to die eventually, well, not all by natural causes. I’ll only meet my end when some strong, cock-sure boy brings it to me violently, relentlessly . . . with extreme prejudice…. “ he said, voice fading to match his dreamy, far away gaze, “Oh to see such a day.”

“Gee, do you need one of these too?” Bulma said as she offered her lit cigarette to Frieza.

Frieza gave an impish giggle. “You’re terrible – I like you.” He replied, taking the cigarette from between her fingers, “Nasty little habit but anything to get the smell of that tea out of my lungs I suppose.” He said as he wrapped his lips around the cigarette still slightly damp from her initial drag, “So . . . Capsule Corp employee . . . tell me, what’s it like working for the last Saiyan in the known universe?”

Bulma clasped both sides of her open jacket with one hand and squeezed them together, forgetting momentarily that the Capsule corp logo was emblazoned on the shoulder nearest to her new-found friend, “Oh, well, it’s kind of different for me than most employees I guess. I’ve known Goku since he was a child.”

“Do tell!” Frieza said as he opened two bottles of beer, setting one in front of her and keeping the other for himself.

“Well, he was just a goofy kid to me, you know. A little strange, but . . . we never could have guessed he was from another planet, until . . . “

“Until what? What was your first clue?”

“My first clue . . . . was when I shot him in the head and he lived. I think he was maybe 4 at the time.”

Frieza ducked his head to keep from spitting his beer, “You WHAT?!”

Bulma cracked a smile, “Should have been my first clue, but . . . I just assumed he was this weird little kid with a hard head and a tail. Then the whole Great Ape thing happened, then we knew—”

“Ah. It’s known in galactic tongue as The Ozaru form. Nasty business, that form,” Frieza said as he took a deep drink from the bottle, “Probably contributed a great deal to the demise of their race.”

Bulma raised an eyebrow and took a deep drink, eyes flying momentarily to the thin cloud of steam rising and disappearing beyond the kitchen window, “Then the events on Namek . . . “

“Then we all ended up down here.” Frieza said, studying the girl before him, “It’s not so bad, really, despite the isolation. This planet has such a wide variety of environments. It’s like a little cheeseboard—just a sampling of all the other things that most planets offer homogenously in plenty. Desert planet, ice planet, water planet, tree planet—you have all that in such a small scale. That’s probably the reason why Earth’s never been acquired by pirates, or by the Saiyans while they were still in their heyday.”

“Say, while we’re on the subject of alien stuff . . . “ Bulma said, leaning forward to place both elbows on the bar, “What have you heard about this whole Void thing?”

“What void thing?”

“Someone told me there was something going on over on this side of town, something strange,” She said, sitting up suddenly as the kitchen door burst open with the dishwasher holding a plate, his hands still covered by the same green gloves he had used to wipe down the counter. He approached the bar and tossed the plate in front of her before returning to the kitchen, nearly spilling the steaming blackened sandwich into her lap. Orange and white cheese oozed like slow-rolling lava, crushed between two massive slices of bread that were three times the thickness of regular sliced bread. “Did he—did he change his gloves before cooking?”

“Doubt it.” Frieza said as he opened another two bottles, “He never takes them off, you know, something about his sensitivity to . . . earthly things.”

“Has he lived on this side of town that long that he can’t remember how to human, or?”

“Perhaps. Now what were you going on about before we were so rudely interrupted? Something about a void?”

“Yeah. People are saying there’s something over here snatching up kids, like some sort of phantom.”

“Oh that old stink,” Frieza said, rotating his eyes around in their sockets, “A tall tale the Namekians tell to keep their kids off the street at night, Kai forbid they actually watch them for a change. What we do have over here in plenty is gang activity, but that’s a delicate thing for the news to cover, isn’t it? With so many humans upset about the power situation, there’d probably be some kind of riot if they thought their little houseguests were up to something sinister.”

“Yeah, well . . . the only riot most humans seem to be up to these days is that stupid RomRiot game.” Bulma said as she sulked slightly in her seat, “Besides, I thought the Namekians were peaceful.”

Frieza did not immediately reply. He instead stared long and hard into Bulma’s big blue eyes, his expression fluidly changing with the thoughts churning inside his head. “Namekians yes.”

“Yardratians?”

“They’re all about peace and love too.” Frieza said in a exaggerated mocking voice.

“Then who?”

“Monkeys, of course. Plus a few other species of humanoids that followed us here, you all basically look alike to me. Do you remember, a few years ago,” He said as he quickly opened a third set of beer bottles for Bulma and himself, “a little news story about the Vegeta clan? How they all got mysteriously wiped out, almost overnight, under dubious circumstances? What if I told you they were Saiyan?”

“Really?!” Bulma squeaked, her head bobbing under the weight of her third beer, “Wow, so they’re the ones stirring up shit over here?”

“Oh no, don’t be ridiculous. They’re gone, all gone, whole race.” Frieza said with a shrug of his shoulders, “But those ‘others’? real weirdos let me tell ya.” He said with a snicker that grew into a laugh he could only contain by slapping the bar.

“Weirdos!” Bulma said, returning the laugh with a melodious, girly giggle that grew into a shared guffaw with Frieza. And every time she glanced over the bottle at the weird little white and purple man, they would both laugh uproariously like long time friends sharing an inside joke. Many times Bulma tried to set the bottle down to take a bite of her food, but the shared joke became funnier and funnier, and when the dishwasher busted through the door again and went to work cleaning up the now mostly empty tables, they both tried to become very quiet and very serious, but when Frieza would lose a snort, Bulma would lose a hiss and a chortle, until they were full on cracking up, much to the irritation of the dishwasher, who was stroking each table with the rag as though he were trying to strip the paint from the surface.

Bulma took a bite of her thick and oozing sandwich. “Ohhhhhhh my gorb,” she said with her mouth full, “I’m starving and this tastes like love.”

Frieza gave a boyish giggle, “Well if I’m going to have food lying around for weirdos it better be good!” 

Bulma buried her face behind the thick body of the full beer. She slapped the counter and very nearly touched the sandwich with her open mouth as she and Frieza laughed hard and long and loud. She raised the bottle and lowered it, laughing to herself as Frieza began the chore of turning off lights and locking things up for the night. She slowly composed herself and let the almost full beer slide down her throat in one big liberating gulp. She leaned far back on the barstool, catching every last drop in the bottle and when she came upright again, Frieza had already uncapped yet another, this one a little fizzier than the others, swirling it around slightly before handing it to her with a wicked smile and a nod. “Alright, if you insist.” She said, her words bumbling into each other in sleepy, slurry, sloshy speech. She boldly downed the cold, yeasty drink until only a quarter of it remained, and as she set the bottle down, the dishwasher yanked it away and threw it in the busing tray. “Hey! Goddamnit I was gonna finish that.”

Frieza cocked an eye and leaned on his elbow against the bar, “He’s always in a hurry. Not sure why, it’s not like he has a home to rush back to.”

“Really? Like, is he homeless?”

“fraid so. Works 80 hours a week most of the time and still hasn’t a place of his own. Shame.”

“So what, does he stay here?”

“Psh fuck no. I’m not running a daycare for wayward monkeys. He stays out on the streets and when he’s not working, he’s training and when he’s not training, he’s working so it doesn’t seem to bother him, nor does he make it a priority. It’s kind of sickening.” Frieza said with a yawn. “Now, you do have autopilot on that thing you rode in on, don’t you?”

“Yes oCourse.” She said as she sifted through her wallet, “How much do I owe you?”

Frieza glanced at the twenty piece in Bulma’s hand and narrowed his eyes, “Twenty. Fourth beer was on the house.”

Bulma slapped the cash to the bar with authority and slid off the barstool. She gave a salute with two of her fingers from her forehead and leaned deep to the right as she stumbled at an angle towards the door, flinching at the bright neon lights as she broke through to the outside world. She stumbled to the cycle clumsily tried to hike her leg over the side, falling chest first into the gas tank. “Ooohhhhhk Bulma maybe . . . maybe that 4th beer was . . . . “ She said with her lips mushed up against the instrument panel. She pushed her body over the side with her left foot planted flat against the ground. Her arms hung from each side like a tree sloth, but each time she tried to lift them, each time she tried to lift her head, she became aware . . . that somewhere, beneath the jubilant, bubbly, giggly, sloshy, fun alcohol in her stomach, there was something else, something as sinister as the smile on Frieza’s face, something . . . in the 4th bottle, that washed down gritty, a sickening foam that was thick and warm and sticky, not clean, not normal. Her arms wobbled as she pushed herself up from the gas tank. She looked all around herself and the pink and the blue and the purple lights all around the Marijuku district were spinning, caving in all around her as though it were forming a portal to another world. She gently pawed at the instrument panel and the bike awoke. She waved her hand over it again and 10 hands followed in a shadowy stream of Bulmas from some other dimension, 10 other hands, none of them hers except the one that dangled weakly to her side, the others tapping menus and reaching deep into the engine of the bike to make otherworldly modifications to siphon her lifeforce and make it into ligonoon tea, Frieza’s wicked smile, smoky Namekian eyes staring out from parked cars that became booths in a restaurant the size of the whole city block. “Go.” Bulma said as she pulled her elbows back, seeing the streak of 20 arms being pulled back into her, “GO!” she shouted, and the bike moved forward, into the neon tunnel of Marijuku city lights with Bulma hanging from the handlebars like a worn out flag. The bike raced through the corridors of vending machines and red paper lanterns, spiraling slowly all around her, a blur peppered by the occasional alien face or body, moving like a roller coaster on rails or a fast rat in a familiar maze only, as the bike retraced its path, and its navigation became more and more capricious and frantic, it seemed that the maze had changed, the cheese had been moved. Bulma flicked her thumbs and the autopilot disengaged. The blur of light gave way to black and forty of Bulma’s phantom arms struggled to keep the bike in balance as they pulled the machine off the never ending path, drifting in a dramatic side slide before fishtailing towards the darkest alley she could find with her only two eyes, one that led away from the glitz and glamor of the early morning streets of Marijuku. She sped into the alley strong and sure, a cold sweat washing away all the other phantoms of herself as she crossed the threshold between buildings, a black and blue mausoleum compared to the loop of plastic fanciful streets that she looked over her shoulder just to steal one last glance of before the bike hit a pile of garbage, sending it wobbling violently side to side. Bulma pulled back on the handlebars and dug her heels into the emergency brakes. The bike stopped, inches from a brick wall, and fell heavily to the right on another pile of garbage, trapping Bulma’s leg beneath its crushing weight. She groaned as she lowered her head to the cardboard and paper trash cradling rider and bike, her mind capitulating between fishing her pockets for her phone and passing out. She closed her eyes for what felt like a split second, and when she opened them again, she saw a figure standing over her with bright orange hair that seemed too small for his egglplant shaped head, weird, round, hippo-like teeth brightly smiling out to her as he craned his thick neck down to took at her. Bulma gasped. She struck out her arms and legs in a desperate struggle to get up but her leg was still pinned and the pain in her hip was too much to move her thigh any further. “Wha—what do you want from me?” She barked out.

“You’re one of them hoo-mans, aint you?” He said with a menacing guffaw, “The name’s Recoome, rhymes with doom.”

Bulma made herself very small. She shrank back into the cardboard and curled her right arm under her body until her slender fingers were just perpendicular to her breast pocket. She slowly bent the knee of her right leg, fighting hard not to wince as she felt the skin of her calf scratch and tear and burn under the jutting pieces and parts of the cycle engine. 

“Now I know you hoomans are very stupid and you don’t know nothin about what happened up there on Namek, but I was part of the Ginyu force, ever heard of em?”

Bulma shook her head. She slid her fingers up to her breast pocket and hooked them in, breathing a small sigh of relief as her fingers touched upon the capsule she hoped she would never have to use.

The large man gracefully came up to the very tips of his toes. He squatted and posed, flexing his impressive muscles before swooping up to what appeared to be an overly dramatic fighting stance. “Now you see my power!” He said as he bent over the bike within breathing distance of her face, “Now you know I can take anything I want from you!”

“I-I-I don’t have anything for you to take, you creep!” She said, finishing her words with a squeak as the capsule slid down to the bottom of her pocket. “Y-you better BACK OFF !! I got a weapon under here!!”

“Ha Ha Ha what’s your pea shooter gonna do to a guy like me? They ain’t made a hooman weapon that can penetrate MY skin! Come on! Take your best shot!” He said, standing straight and tall with his barrel shaped chest puffed out, “Right in the ol heart, c’mon give it to me!”

Bulma plunged her hand into her breast pocket and wrapped her fingers around the capsule, pushing the pin in as soon as her thumb could find it. She wrapped her hand around the but of the gun as soon as it popped out and pointed it at the goofy orange haired man, “I’m warning you!!”

“Look lady I ain’t playin ! Take a shot and see what happens!”

Bulma passed the gun to her free hand and squeezed the trigger. Bullets pinged and zipped off the man’s body and ricocheted into the walls around them. She cringed as one of them zinged dangerously close to the bike’s fuel tank, biting her lip to keep from crying out as the sudden, instinctual movement wedged her trapped knee further under the unforgiving metal of the bike. 

“See? NOTHIN!” He said, firing up his goofy, menacing laugh once again.

“I don’t HAVE anything for you you numbskull!! Didn’t you hear me the first time?!” Bulma screeched as she pushed and pulled her trapped leg against the matter beneath the bike.

“Sure you have something.” He said, rubbing his hands together as his eyes took on a lecherous look, “Your life.”

“Wha—”

“Recoome . . . rhymes with doom. Now you’ll find out why hoomans don’t come over here, won’t cha.” He said as he grabbed Bulma by the throat, squeezing his massive hands around her, jerking her forcefully out from under the bike. He flashed a smile as he brought her red and swelling face close to his, “You stinking, weak earthlings, you die too quick!!” He said as he shook her like a rag.

Bulma brought her hands up to his wrists. She dug her pointed fingernails into his skin and kicked, but just like in a dream, there was no force to her strikes, no real pressure to her attempt to claw. She pried her gritted teeth apart to scream but the only sound that came forth was a harrowing gurgle. Her eyes floated in their sockets. As reality began to fade away, she had a vision of herself as the Capsule Corp tower, its faint light slowly fading, the ghost of her dead father growing weak and disintegrating in the dead of night. In her final moments, she caught, out of the corner of her dimming eye, the color black, deep and relentless, the blessed void. It reached out from the mouth of the alley like an occult starburst, moving with rapturous speed, erasing everything behind and beside it in its absolute vacancy. Bulma relaxed her body. She closed her eyes and let her arms and legs lay limp in anticipation . . . of being nothing, of no longer existing, of submitting to the deep, dark depths of shadow, but at the end of her hallucination, her ass hit the ground hard on her already sore hip. Cold air rushed into her lungs in an embarrassingly loud gasp. She opened her eyes wide and saw the tip of Recoome’s bright orange hair twisting and turning within a field of utter nothingness—blacker than black as though missing from her vision, censored by magical means, a thing redacted from this dimension, like a tear in space and time. She attempted to crawl backwards away from its seemingly growing footprint, but the pain in her hip and wooziness from the beer and the choking left her pinned beneath the terror that her eyes and brain could not sync. The void spread itself out and let go of Recoome before throwing him into the air and blasting him with a bright burst of energy that tore through the center of his body before exploding. Bulma’s eyes quickly scanned every inch of the void in the dying light of the energy pulse, but it was just as black as it had been in the safety of the shadows except that . . . the top . . . the very top . . . the very very top, where its head would have been if it were a creature . . . she saw, in her still very drunken and almost near death state, what looked like fringes, like thin filaments, moving like black fire, gathering upward to a neat point. But just as quickly as her eyes could make it out, the filaments disappeared under a hump of the deepest matte black—the void was turning towards her. She pumped her legs and scrambled backwards. She planted the heel of her palm on a wet, loose brick and slipped as the void passed overhead, the force of its speed slamming her backwards. Bulma lay on the street passing in and out of consciousness. She could not discern between the sound of drips in the alley or the sound of footsteps, the dark of night or the black embrace of the void, the weight of her own body or the weightlessness of being lifted and carefully set down upon the seat of the once again upright bike, filaments or fingers pressing down on the instrument panel as she heard a hoarse, male whisper say, “Go!” 


	3. Monday morning at Capsule Corp -- Yamcha's emergency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma returns to work on Monday with thoughts of the Marijuku phantom fresh on her mind, but why does Yamcha keep calling at the worst of times?
> 
> \----------------------------------
> 
> Thanks for all the comments and reads guys :) !! I truly appreciate you indulging my weirdness :D !!!!




_Bulma’s eardrums trembled. Floating in the deep silence of space, she felt the cold creep upon her skin, fine crystals of ice forming , stars fading, yielding their ultimate light, the end. The utter blackness of the universe once so deep and vast, crowded around her, sucking the blue from her hair and the color from her skin until her whole being turned blank and white. “This is the end, isn’t it?” She said, only to realize that it was not the universe suffocating her, but a hand, that the black of space was not a vacuum, but a cushion that cradled her, that she was not floating, she was being carried, supported, held, and suddenly the feeling wasn’t bleak anymore. A shooting star drove the hand from her neck with a gentle push and burst. Her assailant was no more. She looked at her hands. She made strong fists as an aura of rich, vibrant rainbow light traced up her arms. She closed her arms and fainted back, surrendering herself to the velvet embrace, dreading the inevitable moment when it would whisper in her ear, “Go”_

Bulma startled awake with the image of herself floating through the welcoming darkness quickly fading. She sat up and squeezed her eyes shut. She balled her fists around the hem of her comforter and tried tried tried to recall what she was wearing, what she was doing and who was in the rest of the dream, but she was left with only a rich, overwhelming emotion that went away as soon as she laid eyes on the still-sleeping Yamcha. She sighed as she plowed all of her fingers through the crown of her head, her elbows resting on her upraised knees. She felt her heart plunge into sadness as she came to recognize what the emotion was, something fundamentally missing, not obvious, not easy to identify, not easy to ask of anyone. Carefully she slipped out of bed and walked to the bathroom. She planted both hands on the sink and raised her eyes to the mirror. “It’s not for you, Bulma. You’re the strong one, remember?” 

Monday morning, Bulma dressed herself, gathered her things and mounted the bike, but as soon as she glanced at the instrument panel, she felt her stomach tie itself in knots. She let out a breath and hung her head between her shoulders—in whatever way she had made it home on Saturday, the route had taken nearly all her fuel. She quickly dashed her fingers into every pocket, every compartment, every fold in her work bag and the bike’s side saddles and found only tarnished pennies and lint. She couldn’t ask Roshi and Oolong for more money, not after they had so generously given her a 20 Zenni, and time was getting dangerously close to too late. She steeled herself up inside. She gripped the handlebars and gave the instrument panel an authoritative swipe of her hand, bringing the beast to life with a gesture, quickly joining the stream of rush hour traffic. She held her breath as she neared the city’s first big hill and began to sweat as the digital fuel gage dialed deep into bright red and began to flash. _C’mon stupid bike just get me over the hump, just get me to the top, please!!_

Bulma stood on the footpegs and leaned forward into the incline. The bike chugged and choked. It sputtered and threatened to die at 3/4ths up the apex. _C’mon c’mon just a little further!! Get me to the top and we can do the thing!!_ The bike slowed. It’s belly dipped towards the pavement, crawling with such little speed that she reached her foot out and tried to push it up the hill like a child on a bicycle. She felt the cycle wobble and wave as honking cars zoomed past with middle fingers thrust out of the windows at her. She looked down to the rearview mirror and felt a sudden surge of hope overtake her dread--it would be risky, but it would work. Despite the speed limits, despite the fear of being caught by the cops, with one eye on the quickly dwindling fuel source and another eye on the vehicles around her, Bulma jockeyed for position. She brought her bike to the dividing line between lanes, positioning herself just in front of two very large ground transport trucks, and just as they overtook her, Bulma killed the engine to the bike and let the hover fans open as wide as they could, engaging the kind of, sort of, definitely highly experimental and highly illegal float feature, a modification of her own making, catching and capitalizing on the awesome laminar flow of the much larger vehicles, the force of which shot the bike forward at incredible speed. Every building she passed she felt equal amounts of terror and exhilaration—terror at the thought of Krillin or some other police officer catching her in the act, exhilaration at the thought she that she could possibly make it, beat the fuel gauge, get on the elevator in time, get to her desk before ChiChi could---------

Bulma plunged into the Capsule Corp parking garage and slid into the first available cycle spot she could see. She placed her hand on her heart and exhaled. .02. She slid into work with .02 left in fuel with exactly 2 minutes left to get into the building and start her morning routine. She boarded the elevator with a group of suits, bringing her ragged and torn Capsule Corp bag in front of her before waving her top tier security badge in front of the badge reader. She stood tall beneath their dirty looks, keeping her eyes fixed on the glass elevator doors as they straightened their ties and coughed and rocked back and forth on their heels, their glaring eyes touching upon her aberrant blue hair, her too short shorts and midriff teasing shirt, the fingerless motorcycle gloves still on her hands all cracked and wrinkled at the knuckles, the band patches that crowded out the Capsule Corp logo on her jacket. But once the elevator doors parted, the whole of engineering opened up to her as if she were the captain of a ship waiting for her in another dimension. Cheery smiles sparked. Heads nodded in reverence. The suits on the elevator had only time to collectively narrow their eyes in envy before they were whisked away to their dreary cubical farms, leaving Bulma free to breathe in the freedom of the lab, her lab. It was cool, clean and sterile, a symphony of glass and diamond plate steel with the Capsule Corp glowing an errie blue on the ceiling above the long white desks that dotted the wide open floor. She placed her bag on her side of the table and gave a smile to her deskmate—a young, pretty girl, quiet and strange. Her eyes were a striking white shade of artic blue, her hair pin straight and snow-white blonde. Every time Bulma saw her face, the complaint so casually bantered about by men in the Capsule Corp breakroom came dancing through her brain like an unwanted chorus line: _she never smiles!_ What more did they expect from someone so odd? What did they expect from someone addressed only by her employee number at her own insistence? What more did they want from a girl who built robotics meticulously, almost intimately, as if diodes and circuit boards and hydraulics were no different than her own flesh and bone? 

Bulma felt a warm smile slowly grow across her face as the girl raised her welding pen to the robot she had been working on for months, silently admiring her deep focus for a few moments before she caught her eye. “Oh, Hey 18. Has she been here yet?”

“No.” the other woman replied coldly, “but she will be. Better look busy.”

“Don’t have to look busy, I’m always busy.” Bulma replied. “Did you have a good weekend?”

“Went shopping.”

“You’re always shopping.”

The very corner of 18’s lip upturned, which was the closest 18 ever came to a smile. “Found some good deals. Did you have a good weekend?”

“Not exactly.”

“Uh oh, that sounds interesting.” 18 replied, her tone peeking just above flat, “What happened?”

“Um, well . . . first of all, I ran into that Cop Friday that’s always giving out tickets at the lights . . . little guy, you know, Krillin?”

“Oh.” She said, her cold, white face warming slightly, “I thought you were associates.”

“Yeah, well . . . not enough of associates to keep him from writing me a ticket.”

18 lowered her welder and glanced over her shoulder, “Shut up no way.”

“Yep. Light violation.”

“How much this time?”

“200 Zeni”

“For your instrument panel?”

“Get this—it was for my instrument panel AND a cigarette. Remember we were joking about that the other day? It ACTUALLY happened!”

18 did not reply. She blinked her icy blue eyes and studied Bulma’s expression and it fluctuated fluidly between amusement and sadness.

“I wish I could say that was the worst that happened to me this weekend, but . . . I was assaulted Saturday.”

“Assaulted?” 18 replied with the slight tilt of her head.

“Yeah, some maniac. I don’t know if he was on drugs or just had it out for human beings, but . . . I was trying to find my way out of Marijuku and I did something stupid, “ Bulma said with a roll of her eyes,”I rode my bike while I was drunk. I thought the autopilot could handle it but it just kept going in circles and I panicked and wrecked it, and he just happened to be in the alley. He grabbed me by the neck while I was pinned by the bike and yanked me out from under it. Said he was going to kill me!”

“That’s crazy! But you escaped?”

“Well, kind of. Do you watch the news?”

“I’m not a TV person.”

“Well, have you heard of this thing that’s going on in the Marijuku district with Namekian children disappearing and the darkness and all that?”

“I have not.”

“Well there’s some phenomena going on over there where this thing is just kind of emerging from the shadows and it’s super black, like, light absorbing, like a black hole or something.”

18’s two thin eyebrows pinched subtly closer together, “In Marijuku. Where the aliens are?”

“Yeah. I went there. And I encountered that thing first hand. That guy was choking me, and it swooped down, picked him up, threw him up in the air and exploded him!! Isn’t that nuts??”

“So it saved you.”

“Yeah, I mean, I had a gun, I could have taken him down.” Bulma said as she hooked her short blue hair behind her ear. 

“Was your drink drugged?”

“I . . . hope not.” Bulma said, her face turning slightly red as she turned her attention back to her workstation, “I mean, come to think of it, I was fine until . . . well that last drink was . . . “

“That’s definitely not what I’d expect from your weekends.”

“Yeah, no, definitely not.”

18 reached into her pocket and pulled out a 10 Zeni, placing it on Bulma’s desk before returning to her robot. 

“Um, what’s that for?”

“I owed you.”

Bulma shot 18 a quizzical look, “For what?”

“We made a bet.”

“A bet?”

“You said last week, I bet you $10 that cop is so petty he’d write a ticket for a cigarette and I said he wouldn’t. I lost.” 

“Well I didn’t mean that literally.”

“Fair is fair. Sorry he was such a dick to you.” She said as she glanced out of the floor to ceiling window, her eyes quite obviously trailing down to the street. 

“Oh he’s not out there yet. He will be. Later tonight I’m sure.”

“Hm?” 18 sounded distantly as she glanced back at Bulma.

“Officer Krillin. C’mon, it’s sort of obvious that you have a thing for him.”

“It’s not a thing.”

Bulma halted mid-login on her computer. She propped her elbow on the desk and cupped her palm upward, throwing 18 an incredulous look. “Ok but . . . I mean, this isn’t the first time, girlfriend. This is NOT the first time I’ve noticed you noticing him if you know what I mean. I have to know. I HAVE to know what is it that fascinates you about him? I mean, you and I have been working together for months now and no offense, but I’ve never seen you show interest in anyone else, and your hair, your makeup, your clothes . . . you’re almost model perfect! So why him?”

18 returned her gaze to the window. She scanned the street below, watching the cars pass, watching pedestrians move, sensing Bulma’s barely perceptible head shake as she scanned through her morning emails. She waited through several changes of the traffic light below before speaking again, “I visited a zoo once. There was a bird on display that could pull its wings into a hood and when it was hooded, it could absorb 99% of light, and it did so so that it could display a small tuft of shimmering blue feathers to attract females.”

“It was . . . kind of hairy. The phantom I saw.”

“And apparently sentient.”

Bulma narrowed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She wrapped her arms around herself blew a deep breath out of her nose as 18 wandered away from the window and snapped back to her meticulous work. She felt a quickening in her mind of thoughts and ideas, something 18 was always good at instigating. She took a quick look around the floor and leaned into her workstation, minimizing Capsule Corp email and agendas, ignoring meeting requests and process improvements, searching known alien cultures online through images and text for shapeshifters, beings capable of transformation: Saiyan, functionally extinct, capable of transformation related to physical power and chi. Ginyu, functionally extinct, capable of body-jumping to inhabit beings like a parasite. Yardrat, not endangered, selectively capable of instant transmission and gigantism. Namekian, not endangered, capable of multiple fusion, asexual reproduction, does not consume food but may alter consciousness with liganoon tea or brew, unsafe for humans. _Unsafe for humans_ Bulma thought, glancing over her shoulder, taking comfort in the fact that 18 was still entirely engrossed in welding new diodes to the circuit board of her robot _._ Recent Namekian history: After the destruction of Planet Namek, many Namekians relocated to Earth by the suggestion of Goku, planetary hero and CEO of Capsule Corp. They have remained a peaceful yet segregated population.

“No, no . . . that’s not what I’m looking for…” Bulma mumbled to herself, changing the search criteria to news//Namekian//Namekian void//missing children. West City News, (UP): Fears of a phantom haunting the streets of Marijuku. A popular, predominately alien west city neighborhood is under high alert following the sighting of what some locals are dubbing “the void”, a mass blacker than black that seems to be either absorb or explode its victims. Three lives have been claimed by the phenomenon so far, all three belived to be linked to the same alien army. Captain Cui of Ginyu, Lietenant Jeice of unknown origin and most recently Recoome of—

“All adults, what about the kids?” She mumbled into her hand, “Assistant, search /// Phantom voids///kidnapping

0 results found

“Ok,” Bulma said, “Assistant, Recent Namekian child kidnappings”

0 results found

“Marijuku kidnapping? Child murder?”

0 results found

Bulma planted her mouth against her thumb and index fingers. “alright, a different approach. Search ….darkest substance known to man.”

Vantablack: Vantablack is a material developed by Surrey Nano Systems and is the darkest substance known, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light. Made from Carbon nanotubes, these structures absorb any light that touches the surface by trapping the photons until they are almost completely absorbed. Production is limited to the aerospace and defense sectors, but similar substances may be available in--

“You were late this morning.” ChiChi said as she suddenly appeared at Bulma’s side, who gasped loudly as she startled. “This is your third infraction this month.” 

“I wasn’t late. I parked at 7:58.”

“You didn’t log into your workstation until 8:06.” ChiChi said as she stood straight and tall and rigid in her finely tailored skirt-suit, “We have schedule adherence policies that must be followed universally, regardless of seniority, rank or status. We ALSO have a DRESS code policy that you are yet again in violation of.” She said, her eyes quite obviously flying to Bulma’s blue hair.

“Look, this IS my natural hair color. Dad’s—Dr Brief’s hair was purple, my hair is sometimes either blue or green, I’m not going to dye it just to adhere to some phoney baloney corporate culture.”

“Well this culture has been generous enough to keep you employed after the death of Dr. Briefs, even after your work performance has been, at best, lackluster. What exactly have you been working on so far today?”

“You’re not my immediate supervisor ChiChi, Goku is, and if he took issue with my—”

ChiChi crossed her arms under her breasts and patted her back with her clipboard, “My Husband doesn’t always understand the necessity of running a business LIKE a business. He can have you work on whatever pet project he wants but when it comes to governing the day to day efficiency of employees, it is 100% my responsibility and if I catch you coming in late, putzing around researching things online that have nothing to do with your current projects—”

“You were spying on me?”  
“I have a right to know what Company equipment is being used for and why.” ChiChi said as she scribbled a few notes on her clipboard. “You’ve earned yourself a written warning.”

“A WHAT?! What am I, a schoolkid?! You gonna send me to the principal’s office too??”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Well don’t you have to put me on some sort of verbal first? You can’t just leapfrog over the rules!”

“You WERE on a verbal!” Chichi said, planting her hands on her hips and thrusting her face towards Bulma, “You had four lates last month, that’s more than most employees have in one year!”

“I’m not signing your bullshit form ChiChi!” Bulma said as she shot up from her chair, pulling her Capsule Corp jacket over her shoulders and thrusting the band patches on it defiantly outward towards the other woman, “This was NEVER an issue while Dad was still alive! You treat us like we’re not even adults!”

“Well He’s DEA—”

“Yoooooooooooooooooooooo!” 

Both women turned their heads towards the sound of Goku’s voice. Bulma crossed her arms under breasts and ChiChi held her head high as he strolled slowly through the room. He wore a gray, business-like Gi and a cheesy smile, approaching the two women with a casual kind of swagger. “C’mon there’s no need to fight like this! It’s Monday, right? Time to get excited about some fresh projects, which I have one for YOU!” he said, making finger guns towards Bulma.

“Ugh Kami don’t do that.” Bulma said with a deep roll of her bright blue eyes, “You look like a dork.”

ChiChi gritted her teeth and snapped her arms down to her sides so hard that the tablet in her hand smacked her ass. “You CANNOT call our CEO a—”

“It’s alright, ChiChi—I got this! Finish up the rest of your rounds and I’ll catch you later.”

“MAKE her SIGN IT!!” ChiChi said, slamming the tablet into Goku’s chest before stomping away towards the elevator.

“She’s some woman ain’t she? Hee hee!” Goku said, watching his wife walk away before turning back to Bulma, “Anyway, I’ve come to talk to you about ‘The Possibility of Light’.”

“The . . . the what?”

“I want you to take a break from Engineering for a little while and help me with a little side project that I think could really be the next big breakthrough for Capsule Corp, are you ready?”

Bulma waited a few moments. She tilted her head and looked around the room. She held her hand out palm up and shrugged her shoulders, waiting for Goku to finish what he was going to say.

“Ok so what if . . . what if we studied the effects of the Saiyan aura on human beings? I mean, I can go Super Saiyan pretty easy—that’s what allowed me to beat the bad guys on Namek. I know human beings can’t transform the way Saiyans can, but what I wonder if they could benefit from transforming in some other way? Like, could they get super strong? What if they got as strong as me? Then maybe I could get excited for a fight!”

Bulma gave an exsasperated sigh, “Ugh, Goku. Surely you could get someone from biometrics to help you out with this.”

“Aw c’mon Bulma. They’re just interested in security n stuff. I need someone SMART!” 

Bulma flinched slightly as her cell phone began to ring. “Well G-Goku I’m flattered, but…” She said as she silenced a call from Yamcha, “but I do mechanical stuff. I build things. I don’t have anything to do with—”

“But I have a theory and it’s getting me excited! Look!” Goku said as he quickly powered up to Super Saiyan, scattering tools and papers all over the room, “What if this Super Saiyan aura thing is like an energy we could harvest somehow? We could basically make humans the next Saiyans if we were successful!”

“I-I don’t know that most humans would want that.” Bulma said as a 2nd call from Yamcha came in with an accompanying message that said PICK UP.

“Aw don’t be such a party pooper! I know of lots of humans that want to get stronger, like wrestling guys . . . “

“Goku, I—”

“And Bodybuilders . . .”

Bulma glanced down at her phone, *ITS URGENT* “Goku I really gotta take this—”

“Policemen! Firemen! Prison Guards!”

“Ok I get it! I’ll do it! But look I’m sorry but I’ve gotta take this so can you . . . can you just hold on just 5 secs I won’t take lo—” But before Bulma could finish, a message in red popped up on the screen that said *911!!!* She quickly pressed the answer button and spoke hurriedly into the mic, “Yamcha for Kami’s sake what is going on??”

“Hey uhh, I got a problem.” Yamcha replied, “I uhh, I kind of hit something downtown and—”

“Hit something?!”

“Yeah, I mean, It was just a curb, whatever. But uhhh anyways, can you come down here? I need a tire and I don’t have any cash.”

“What makes you think I do?” Bulma said as Goku looked on quizzically and scratched the back of his head.

“Well, what about your credit card?”

“Yamcha I am maxed on just about every card I own!”

“What about your Capsule corp card?”

“My Cap—ughhhh” She said, turning her body away from Goku. 

“You’ll have a month to pay it off, it’s not like anyone would know.” Yamcha replied, “What am I supposed to do, leave my van here?”

“Yamcha, if I use that card for something other than expenses, I could be fired!”

“I’ve got a job all lined up. They said I can start next week. I’ll give you the money on Friday and you can pay it right back, no one will notice and if they do, you can just tell them you used it on accident. Besides I’m—I’m kind of blocking the street down here and . . . aww shoot. Shoot is that a cop?”

“Yamcha? Yamcha hold on, I’ll be right there!” Bulma said as she quickly grabbed her jacket and keys.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“I’m sorry I have to go!”

“But ChiChi said you have to sign this form.” Goku said as Bulma kept on towards the door.

Bulma stopped at the fueling station and put in $5 zenni.

She raced downtown to Yamcha’s coordinates, arriving just as a city tow truck was backing up to his broke down van. “Hey just . . . just let me take care of this, ok?” She said as she flashed her corporate credit card. “No need to write us a ticket, please?”

Several hours later, Bulma and Yamcha walked through the door of their tiny house with both the cycle and the van parked outside. “What the—what are you guys doing here at this time of the day?” Oolong said as he placed a freshly cleaned plate in the dish drainer.

“Long story.” Bulma said as she squeezed the receipt for the tire store lightly in her hand. 

Yamcha riffled through his bag. He pulled out his laptop and a nice, big, unopened bag of mountain herb. He pulled on his headphones and propped his feet up on the wobbly old coffeetable as Master Roshi pulled the blanket around himself defensively on the other end of the couch. 

“So that’s it, huh? You just go back to RomRiot like nothing happened?”

“Well what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know, maybe says THANKS!” Bulma said as she slammed the receipt to the kitchen table, “and what happened to this job you were supposed to go to today?!”

“Oh well, they said . . . “ Yamcha said, trailing off as he became distracted momentarily by the login screen,

“They said WHAT?”

“They said they like, they wanna hire me, but they can’t right now.”

“They can’t? Well what do they mean?” Bulma said, but Yamcha was already at the startup screen ready to play, “Yamcha goddamnit this is important! I’m talking to you!!”

“I don’t know babe they just said I couldn’t do it GAWD.”

“So no job?”

Yamcha answered with a shrug of his shoulders. He repositioned his headphones and sat up straight, bringing his feet to the floor as the gates to the game swung open on screen. 

“Ridiculous. This is ridiculous.” Bulma said with a shake of her head. “You know what, I’m out of here. Have a nice night, guys.” 


	4. *~Zarbon~*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma makes a late night break for the Marijuku district and runs into a beautiful stranger at Frieza's, but after a night of being wined and dined, something else catches Bulma's eye. Will curiosity kill the cat or call the void?
> 
> \-----------------------------------

4.

Bulma’s cycle cut through the streets of Marijuku like a blur. She swooped by green men in long robes with her eyebrows furled, her sights set dead ahead, away from it all, away from him, down the corridors of brightly lit and animated vending machines framed by long lines of pink and teal neon, palm trees and slow synth music, notes smearing in her ears as she rushed by. She squeezed the handlebars and jerked the bike around corners, gritting her teeth as her anger rose. She brought the bike to a cushiony stop just as she wooshed by Frieza’s storefront. She whipped it around in a sudden U-turn and pulled it to the curb just outside the front door, shutting it down and locking it to the ground. She hopped off, put her hand to the door, and shut her eyes as a knot formed in the pit of her stomach. Visions of multiple arms and orange-haired men flashed through her brain. Like Alice through the looking glass Bulma pushed her way through. She was immediately met by the smell of liganoon tea, which seemed stronger, more intoxicating than it had before. Her stomach turned and growled at the same time. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked through clouds of vapor produced by Namekian hookahs to get to the bar, but before she could slide her butt onto a stool, a loud CRASH came from the corner, startling no one but Bulma as they continued to suck, sip and breathe the sickeningly spicy and psychoactive plant. She quickly looked over her left shoulder and found the dishwasher snarling with his finger pointed in the face of a baked out elder Yardrat, who was curling his claws around his teacup defensively, his watery eyes looking down the length of the dishwasher’s extended arm as he bent over to pick up his bussing tray. With a kind of pompous grandeur, the Yardrat slung his teacup around, dribbling the clearish green liquid all over the table and over the head of the dishwasher before letting out an impish giggle. In an instant the dishwasher was up on the table. He grabbed the Yardrat by his puffy collar and yanked him out of the booth with the alien hanging all limbs loose like a ragdoll high over his head. “Temper, Temper.” Frieza said as he slowly strolled out of the kitchen and up to the bar, “Throw him out, monkey. He’s done. Use the DOOR and NOT the window this time, please. I don’t have the money to patch that thing up again.”

The dishwasher’s eyes narrowed. He tightened his grip on the Yardrat until his puffy collar scrunched, yet still the alien hung lifeless and unbothered, a relaxed smile on his face. The dishwasher drew back his empty fist. Every vein and sinew seemed to pop on his hairless forearm as his bicep curled and hardened. He hoisted the Yardrat a little higher and the alien man’s brows parted slightly.

“NOW monkey!”

The Dishwasher let out a low growl. He lowered the Yardrat to the floor and dragged him to the door, picking up a wasted young Namekian on his way, throwing them both out to the street. 

“And . . . you’re just going to let him do that? to your paying customers?”

“Why not? It hardly deters them.” Frieza said with a flick of his tail. “Speaking of deterred, never thought I’d see you in here again after last time.”

“Frieza—” Bulma said with a leading tone as she folded her hands in front of herself, “Did you give me liganoon beer last time I was here?”

“I don’t know did I? What a dreadful mistake.” Frieza said, coyly placing his hand to his mouth in an exaggerated gesture of humbleness. “I just get so used to serving—”

“The other ones?” came a silky tenor voice from behind, “See to it that it doesn’t happen again.”

Bulma turned her head. A beautiful green haired, green-skinned man—tall and broad shouldered, dressed in high-waisted white pants and a crisp white sports jacket with a golden yellow T shirt underneath that clung to his impressive, bulging pecs and obvious 6 pack abs—appeared at her side. He placed a hand on the back of her stool and an elbow on the bar. He flashed a warm, easy going, closed mouth smile as he searched Bulma’s face, his beautiful light yellow eyes twinkling in the low neon light. “A blungearishal, please. For me and the lady.” He said, his bulbous, dangling earrings and forehead jewel jingling in Bulma’s direction as he gestured towards her. 

“Psh. And you fault them for drinking liganoon.” Frieza said as he took two small glass cups and filled them behind the bar, setting them in front of Bulma and the mysterious stranger with a garnish of fresh mint leaves. 

“I . . . don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Zarbon. Captain Zarbon, at your service.” The man said with a smile, “It’s a native drink from my home planet. Very refreshing, not at all intoxicating. I hope you like it.”

“Well I . . . I don’t want to be rude but . . . last time I had an alien drink from here, I kind of got myself into some . . . trouble.”

“No trouble intended. You just look as though you could use a little relief from whatever it is you’re running from. I saw you outside before coming in here. I don’t mean to pry but most people don’t tear down the streets like that unless they have something on their mind.”

“Um, it’s nothing, really. Just people being inconsiderate, that’s all.”

“You say inconsiderate, but I hear unappreciated. Is that the case?”

“Well, yeah, that too.” She said as she cautiously raised her glass, “Nothing new.”

“Being unappreciated is something no one should get used to, especially not a beautiful girl like you.” He said as Frieza rolled his eyes and groaned before walking back to the kitchen, “What’s your name?”

“Bulma. Bulma Briefs.”

“Bulma Briefs? Beautiful. And what do you do Bulma Briefs?”

“I’m a product developer for Capsule Corp.” She said as she took a sip of the smooth, cool drink, making the mistake of looking him deep in the eyes as the minty flavor flooded her senses. It occurred to her that his flawlessly smooth skin was the same color as mint chocolate chip ice cream, that the flavor had been her father’s favorite, that her first memory of it was at a picnic on the Capsule Corp lawn when times were simple and the weather was warm and sunny. “I um . . . I make new things.”

“A maker of new things. Good. We could use a little bit more of that in the Universe.” He said, his warm smile stoking a warm feeling within her, “Too much selfishness, brutality . . .” he said, his voice trailing off as he met eyes with the dishwasher on his return trip to the kitchen, “Not enough beauty. That’s why I hope you don’t mind me sitting beside you tonight.”

Bulma hooked her hair behind her ear and bit her lips together, “Well, sure, I mean, I’m not here with anyone else.”

“Good. I want you to tell me all about the things you make. Excuse me, sir—” He said to the Dishwasher as he passed by, “A plate, please. For both of us.” He said, scooting a $100 Zenni the dishwasher’s way.

The dishwasher furrowed his brow. He placed the money in his apron and went to the kitchen, clanging pots and pans noisily within.

“Poor fellow. I suppose in his heyday, he was a rather handsome creature, but after so long of living under such hardships, I suppose it’s only natural that he buckle and fade. Guess that’s a little more honest than other people’s ugliness. Seems like so many people have an ugliness that never presents itself right away. Slowly, over time, little by little, the façade erodes, and you see someone for who or what they really are, and it’s frightening, isn’t it? Have you ever encountered someone like that?”

Bulma hung her head and made small watery circles with the condensation sweating off the base of her glass, “Well, what do you think I’m running from?”

“I thought as much.” Zarbon replied as the dishwasher returned with two plates full of every appetizer Frieza’s had to offer. “Now as much as it saddens me to hear that this is indeed your situation, I’d rather not add to your sorrows by dwelling on it. Tell me about your work.”

“Well, look, I just came in here to talk to Frieza a little bit about—you don’t have to feed me or anything mister I mean, I have money.” Bulma said as she dug around her purse for the other $5 Zenni.

“No no no no no really it’s quite alright. I’m the one imposing on you, I understand. I just get so tired of spending my evenings alone. Will you allow me to treat you, just this once?”

“Alright. If you insist.” She said, spying his expensive looking alligator shoes as she looked down to snap her purse closed. “So what is it that you do?”

“Businessman. Not unlike Frieza here.” He said as the small alien walked behind the counter, “We off worlders have a distinct advantage over humans in a sense that we get a fresh new start here on earth. As soon as I landed I knew I had no time to waste, no opportunity to miss or turn down. Your earth is a rich and generous place, full of people receptive to new ideas, new experiences. Try this one next,” he said, pinching a small white cake-like dumpling in his fingers and lifting it to her mouth. 

Bulma took a small, cautious bite. She listened intently to this minty green man speak glowingly about the forests and the trees, the rivers and the waterfalls, the deserts and the cliffs of her home world as if it were the most beautiful in all the galaxies he had ever been in. Slowly she began to realize that it had been a long time since she’d heard any man speak so lovingly about anything, and the sincerity, the gratitude, everything about him was just as refreshing as the drink that she was slowly draining. His movements were gracefully mesmerizing. Each time his fingers would delicately choose a tidbit, a morsel, a bun or some exotic fruit from the plates they were sharing, Bulma found her guard falling and her mouth watering until she was literally eating everything from his hand. She was perfectly content to listen to him speak with his strange, alien way of speaking—so eloquent and silver tongued. 

And soon Zarbon turned his attention back to Bulma, and as she spoke of work she felt herself smiling more than she had in weeks, laughing off all the minor irritations of ChiChi and her tablet, and 18 and her strange, secret crushes on that little prick of a cop. She caught him several times searching over the surface of her face with the same beaming admiration as he wore when speaking of all the beautiful places he’d been while on Earth. Every so often, he would shake his head and lean into her to listen more intently, correcting himself when it seemed his admiration was occupying too much of his attention. 

After hours that passed like minutes, and many laughs and many stories later, he paid the remaining tab and slid off of the barstool. “My dearest Bulma Briefs, I hope this shall not be our last encounter. May I contact you? Directly? For another midnight snack?” He asked, his deep emerald eyes sincerely imploring. 

Bulma slowly sat up straight in her seat, “I ummm . . . I-I-I kind of sort of have a boyfriend.” She said as she hooked her hair behind her ear again, “I mean, I just . . . I’m sorry if you treated me to dinner tonight because you thought I—”

“Oh no no no no no, no guilt. I understand your circumstances perfectly. But if you ever find yourself out at night, lonely, hungry, no one to talk to . . . “ he said as he jotted his number on a small white napkin, “Please, don’t hesitate. And we shall feast again. May I?” he said, taking her hand and raising it close to his face.

“Of course.” 

Zarbon pressed his dry, cold lips to her warm, human hand. He nodded his head in a short, gentlemanly bow to Bulma and Frieza and departed into the pastel painted Marijuku night. “You’d do well to stay away from that one,” Frieza said after a few uncomfortable moments alone with Bulma. 

“Ooo why is he a bad guy?” she teased as she stuffed the napkin into her inside jacket pocket.

Frieza raised an eyebrow. “Suit yourself, simian. Far be it from me to stand in the way of your undoing. All I can say is you musn’t be so star struck by handsome strangers in bars, present company excluded of course.”

“. . . Puh-lease.” Bulma curtly replied and slid off the barstool, “Have a good night.”

Bulma Briefs felt light and airy as she stepped outside of Frieza’s, her hair and skin and face caressed by the warm breath of night, she breathed it all in and sighed it all out with bright hopefulness like she’d never felt before welling up in her heart. She smiled to herself as she thought of his face, his voice. She wondered if his skin tasted like mint chocolate chip ice cream and mentally chided herself for not stealing a taste while his fingers were so close to her mouth. She placed her hand on the bike’s handlebars, then quickly looked over her shoulder as she spied a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye. Quickly and quietly she moved her back to the wall and peeked around the corner. The dishwasher had exited out the side door with the hood of an stained gray hoodie pulled up over his head. He lumbered down the street with his hand to his shoulder, rotating it around in its socket, only managing to make it halfway before wincing and grumbling and growling to himself, jerking it back defensively to himself when it refused to move the way he wanted it to. As he pulled his hood up over his head and crossed the street, Bulma felt a strong urge to follow. She kept herself hidden behind corners and planters and lanterns and vending machines, holding her breath each time he would look behind, sensing her presence yet thankfully never fully catching a glimpse. He walked three blocks into an increasingly dangerous looking neighborhood where there were fewer and fewer Namekians and more of the “other” type aliens that had yet to be categorized by humans. When he was almost at the end of the darkening city street, he suddenly turned around looked each direction with his silver eye zipping around like a robotic laser scanning for his stalker. Bulma gasped and turned away quickly. She scooted back into the shadows of the alley and stifled her breath. She listened for his footsteps but heard only the far away distant cars of the human side of the city. “Damnit Bulma was it really that important?” She said to herself as she glanced down at her phone to look at the time, on a worknight, still on the far side of town. Her fears of another late day at work were gently uprooted by her strong curiosity as the sound of an old metal frame door opening and old school store bells came jingling through the air. Cautiously, she turned her face around the edge of the wall and saw the dishwasher resuming his trudge down the city street with a white bag hooked around his good arm and his hands thrust into the belly pocket of his hoodie. She looked up at the store sign and narrowed her eyes at the name, written in Namekian and English: Piccolo’s Art Supplies.

She waited until the Dishwasher was well out of sight before stepping out into the light. She jogged up the small set of crumbling concrete steps and entered the store, which was more like a hoarder’s nest of dusty old model paints and tubes of acrylics in tarnished plastic hard shells with canvases of every size stuffed and stacked into all the gaps in between on the shelves. At the very back of the product canyon was a single light source on a desk where a very tall and noble looking Namekian stood with his arms tightly crossed, his white cape and white turban shinning brilliantly in the low light. “Can I help you?” He said in a dark, baritone voice.

“I take it, you’re Piccolo?”

But the Namekian did not answer right away. His eyes swept Bulma up and down, lingering momentarily on the Capsule Corp logo on the arm of her jacket before answering, “So what if it is?”

“That ….guy. That guy that was in here just now. Is he a regular?”

“Unfortunately.”

“And . . . he buys paints?”

“That’s not up to me to disclose.”

Bulma threw Piccolo an incredulous look, “This is a paint store, not a hospital. It’s not like I’m asking you to disclose something super private.”

“Yes. He buys paint. He does so rather frequently.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, that knuckle dragging asshole?”

“We all have to find release somewhere.”

“Well, I mean, like, is he some sort of artist? What does he paint?”

“If I had to guess, some sort of vulgar graffiti.”

“Well, what did he buy? Was it spray paint?”

“That’s no concern of yours.”

“Well, I mean, it kind of sort of is. Look, I’ve had my encounters with this guy and he’s the last person I’d ever envision painting a pretty picture for the sake of painting. I mean, from the way Frieza tells it, he’s just some homeless bum that spends his days roughing up customers and mopping up after lingheads. What the hell he could possibly be buying in an art store in the middle of the night?”

“That’s what Frieza told you, huh? Never knew Frieza was such a trustworthy source of information.” Piccolo replied, waiting in silence for several breaths and swallowing the lump in his throat before speaking again, “He was a prince, you know.” He said begrudgingly in a low voice, almost a whisper.

“Who?”

“The man you were following. And also a knuckle dragging asshole, let’s be real here.”

“A Prince?” Bulma said incredulously, “What is he, the prince of janitors?!” 

“That’s rather insensitive of you.”

“Well isn’t a prince supposed to be well-to-do?” she said as Piccolo snorted his disapproval, “Is he from some other country? Is he a different nationality, I mean . . . Who comes to West City as Royalty just to slug it out 80 hours a week washing dishes??”

“I don’t ask questions, I just take money. Now what are you in here to buy?”

Bulma looked all around her surroundings. “Well, I mean, no offense, but you can get a lot these things from the Super Store at a much cheaper price and a lot less, well, outdated.” She said as he tightened his arms around himself, “So, is there something that you carry that keeps you open at, oh, say, midnight?!” She said, pointing at the time on the face of her phone. 

“In case you haven’t noticed, we Namekians don’t follow this bizarre communal shut down that humans do every night. If you only knew how much time you wasted just lying around at night. As for what I sell that keeps me in competition, I sell Namekian paint. That’s not really something you’d find at the Super Store.”

“Namekian paint? What’s so special about Namekian paint?”

Piccolo narrowed his eyes and hummed. He bent down behind the counter and pulled up a folding clapboard display. Despite the clapboard itself looking very old fashioned and outdated, the face of it was dotted with swatches of paint so brilliant that Bulma felt compelled to reach out and touch them just to see if they were real. “Namekian paint isn’t just some facsimile of color, it’s made of carbon fiber nano tubes that capture the light and is therefore color in its truest form. Most humans would be content to color the sun a dull yellow or a brassy orange, but Namekian paints capture the same brilliance as the star itself so that reds and oranges look as alive as fire.”

“That’s gorgeous.” Bulma said under her breath, “and it feels so weird!”

“It’s hydrophobic, so even if its appearance is velvety, it is actually quite smooth and slick to the touch.”

“And artists use it? To make paintings and stuff?”

Piccolo’s arms resumed their crossed position. “Among other things. It has a wide variety of applications. It can bond with any surface it touches and still retain its true brilliance.”

“Can it be mixed?”

“No.”

“Can it be customized?”

“Perhaps.”

“You make them?”

Piccolo made a grumbling sound deep in his throat. “I’m a busy person. If you’re going to make a purchase, I’d appreciate it if you’d make your selection and leave.”

Bulma touched the color red with the pad of her fingertips. Though it looked warm and burning to the eye, it was cool and perfectly slick, Bulma’s fingertips gliding over the surface like water over ice. She scanned through the board at all the available colors arranged like a rainbow in rows from light to dark, noticing that the lower right corner where black should have been was broken off. “Does it come in black?”

“Black . . . is forbidden. It’s taboo among the Namekian people and I’d appreciate it if you’d not mention it.” He said, “There are other customers in the store besides you.”

“Oh. I’m sorry I-I-I don’t know much about Namekian Culture.”

“Like most humans.” Piccolo replied with a shrug.

“So you can’t make it or mix it from other colors?”

“No you can’t just make it and we don’t have any.” He said, sulking down to the wooden stool behind him until he was seated on his billowing cape, “Are you going to buy something or are you just going to talk all night?”

Bulma reached her hand into her purse, “How much red can I buy with $5 Zenni?”

“Don’t insult my intelligence.” Piccolo spat out as he crossed both his arms and his legs, “These are the last vestiges of a dead planet. It takes an extreme amount of time, resources and skill to create even the smallest batch using materials found on Earth. $5 worth wouldn’t even fill the white crescent in the smallest fingernail on your hand.”

“If it’s that expensive then why on earth is he buying an—” 

Suddenly all the haphazardly stacked canvases and paints began to shake. The light on the desk jumped and plumes of dust began to fill the air. “Aww damnit not again!” Piccolo said as he stood up from his stool and threw his arms out to keep the contents of the shelves from falling.

“What the—” Bulma said, her words quickly silenced by a muffled BOOM coming from the outside. She quickly climbed over all the items on the floor and threw herself outside, turning her head briefly in the direction of the commotion before bolting as fast as she could to her bike. She had barely swiped the control panel before the BOOM sounded a second time, and off like a shot, she chased it down the labyrinthine streets of Marijuku like a predator after it’s prey. Her heart raced as her eyes frantically scanned streets and side streets, alleys and parking lots with the same alert awareness as she had using the float feature to evade the cops on her morning commute. “where is it where is it where is it” she said over and over to herself like a chant, as if trying to summon it. She closed her eyes and recalled the feeling of the dream, the creeping darkness, the shooting star, the pulse of light vanquishing the enemy. Another BOOM sounded and Bulma pulled her bike sharply to the right. Her heart leaped up as she cleared the edge of the block. The Void was rushing in on a strange, squat green alien with bumpy skin and bug eyes. It threw pulses of dark purple energy at the black mass, and when one of the disc-shaped pulses grazed the nose of Bulma’s cycle, the void pounced. It picked the alien off the street and kept rushing forward with blinding speed, giving Bulma little time to process what was going on. Out of instinct she swiped her hand over the control panel and placed all the bike’s power on its back thrusters, propelling her hot on the heels of the screaming alien as the void dipped it down to the street and dragged it along the pavement, scraping its skin before bashing its head into a concrete post and leaving it behind in a pool of its own purple blood. It zig-zagged through alleyways but Bulma was quick thinking and the bike was agile. The void picked up speed as it rocketed down the straight, steep hill leading to the bay, but this was exactly what Bulma wanted—an opportunity, a chance. She opened up the float feature and slammed her hand down on the instrument panel, force feeding the thrust a great gulp of fuel before opening the float feature. “I’ve got you!” she spat out through her teeth as the bike jettisoned into the air, the nose of it nudging into the outer edge of the void, but suddenly, as if by teleportation, the void was gone! Out of sight completely, as if it had simply folded itself up into space, or disintegrated, or simply never existed in the first place. 

With both heels dug firmly into the footpegs, Bulma calmed the engine and brought the bike back down to earth. “That is not fair. NOT FAIR!” she said through her teeth with a guttural growl. “I know you’re out there! Show yourself! I just want to talk!”

A few minutes passed. The clouds billowed around the quarter moon in the sky. The fuel cells on her bike began to ding. “This isn’t over. I’m a very determined person, you’ll see!” She said, and as she pulled away, the void raised back up into the sky from its hiding place, taking bags and other items from the street along with it. 


	5. Bulma's talent - The possibility of light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma is not at her desk, leaving 18 to hunt her down within the cavernous QA lab. Meanwhile, Goku is impatient for his project to be completed -- it's a delicate dance between work and Bulma's desire to overtake and capture the void!
> 
> \--------------------------------------------
> 
> Thanks for reading guys :) I really appreciate all the comments and kudos !!!!! it really keeps me motivated :) 
> 
> \-------------------------------




By 9:30, 18 began to experience what most would call “worry”.

Every quarter hour she would stop, take a look around the floor and scan every human head for a sign of blue hair.

“Oh uh, she was in earlier this morning. Around 7.”

“7 am. Huh.” 18 replied to the junior engineer, who was practically quaking in his boots over their interaction, “And then, she departed?”

“Looked to me like she logged in and then went somewhere else. I mean, none of the bigwigs have been down looking for her, and I didn’t see anyone escorting her anywhere. Maybe try the QA lab? Or the heavy machinery shed?”

With a subtle twitch in her eye, 18 processed the Junior Engineer’s words, then turned without further chit chat and walked directly to the elevator. QA Lab. Underground level.

The QA lab was painted operation room green and was as dark and dank as an abandoned asylum. There was something oddly familiar about it to 18, something in her distant past, something terrible, yet despite the unknown memories threatening to erupt she felt no apprehension—the feeling was more matter of fact, almost comforting. It seemed more home like than the barren apartment she kept downtown with its white walls and neutral carpets. At the end of the far hallway she could hear her desk partner grunting, cursing and swearing. 18 did not at all regret coming to QA.

“I thought you might be down here.” 18 said as she leaned against the doorway to the hanger at the far end of the lab, “What’s this?”

“My bike. I’m making mods to it. Could you hand me that caliper please?” She said, holding her hand out beside her as she tuned the blades of the float.

18 picked up the fine precision instrument off of Bulma’s tool cart and handed it to her. “What kind of mods?”

“So uhh . . . we’re friends, right?” Bulma said, raising an eyebrow as she looked up to 18 from her squatting position near the bike’s engine.

“Yeah.”

“I’m modding this bike . . . to catch the void.”

“To catch it? You mean physically, with your hands?”

Bulma’s only answer was a glance upward. She then turned her attention back to the bike, pinching each blade of the float with her calipers and recalibrating the balance. 

“How do you know it’s something that can be caught? What if it doesn’t have a corporeal body? It could be a gas . . . or some sort of phantom as you once called it. We’re still learning about all the others who came with the Namekians after the events on their planet.”

“I had another encounter with it last night. And you’re right about the whole phantom thing it-it disappeared right in front of me even with this thing at full throttle. But I was almost there—almost! I nudged it. I felt that nudge. It was so close I could have reached out and grabbed it!”

18 gave a shrug, “What are you going to do with it once you catch it?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t really thought that far.” She said as she yanked at the guts of the bike. 

18 watched Bulma silently, so silently that after Bulma had pulled all the plugs and wires from the bike and replaced them with new ones, she suddenly looked over her shoulder when she remembered that the girl had been standing there, but 18 was not in the door frame, and wasn’t anywhere else in the room. A flood of “what ifs” raced through her mind—what if she wasn’t being serious about the whole friend thing? What if she saw the Capsule Corp parts being installed on the bike? What if she knew they had been pulled from inventory and not from her own stock? What if she told ChiChi? _What IF she told ChiChi_?

And what if she was right about the whole phantom thing? What if she were risking her job modding the bike for stupid reasons for a thing she might never locate again? She sat on the floor and plowed her oil stained hands through her hair, staring deep into the guts of the stuffed and tuned bike. She smiled to herself as she thought of all the many adventures she’d had as a teenager on the very first bike she’d ever built, the promise her father had made, that she could roam the world however which way she wanted if she could build the bike from scratch without any help or direction from him. Of course, she had plenty of direction--the man couldn’t help himself when he saw things that could be easily improved, and despite all of her innovations, she still found his hand gently overtaking hers when the reality of being 13 came crashing through her freedom-dreams.

“You like Irish Cream in yours, right?” 18 said as she reappeared in the doorway with a large hot coffee in her hand.

“Oh! 18! You didn’t have to do that!” She said as 18 lowered the paper cup to her, “Thanks, I hope ChiChi doesn’t give you hell for being away from your station so much today. You know how she is about ‘adherence’”

“. . . You do know that I hate her guts too, right?” 

Bulma felt a warm smile creep across her face. She cradled the coffee in her hand and savored the sight of a friendly face from somewhere other than across the desk or at the bar. She scooted back slightly as 18 squatted down and peered into the engine, dipping her delicate fingers in to twist, pull, re-route, ratchet, and complete the mod Bulma was struggling to make. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“No that’s not intrusive.” Bulma said as she took a sip from her coffee, “I get it. But what about this backflow? If it channels in your configuration, it could overwhelm the head and blow out the left blade.”

“It could be insulated.”

Bulma shook her head, “Too much weight. If we insulate all of them that way, the bike would be too heavy to engage the float. Here. Try plumbing this line to that box. I’ll start it and see if it channels where it’s supposed to, ready?”

18 undid her re-route and followed Bulma’s direction. The bike started and sputtered, and for the remainder of the morning, the two of them remained engaged in a battle of brains vs. parts, tools vs. hands with 18 occasionally disappearing and reappearing with coffee and snacks. By noon the bike was completely parted out on the floor. By 3 the bike was not only reassembled, but was so completely renewed from top to bottom that it barely looked like the same vehicle. It had a high overhead arch that was shiny and white, two covered wheel ports, a broader body to accommodate a nearly triplicated cylinder base and four fast-deploying blades tucked into the rear wheel wells to either side. The two women took turns racing it around the empty chambers of the QA lab, setting up targets and obstacles to test its agility. “This has been like the best day I’ve had at work in as long as I can remember. Thank you for all your help with this 18, I really appreciate it.”

“No worries. I enjoyed it as well. But Goku has you working on such petty projects. I mean, you certainly have a talent for engineering, so why waste it with busy work?”

“Because I have a talent for engineering, that’s why.” Bulma said with a sigh, “ChiChi and Goku both want to keep me busy with petty things because they want me under their control. Goku’s installment as CEO was flimsy enough that ChiChi kind of sees to it that there’s no chance someone from the Briefs family could regain control. So. I become their prisoner.” She said, thrusting her hands into her jacket pockets.

“Office Politics. Interesting how these things manifest.” She said, “I think it would be wise for you not to be seen today, you know, 'adherence'. Exit the QA lab through the garage. If anyone asks, I’ll cover for you.” 

That night, Marijuku was quiet. 

Bulma patrolled the street, alert and focused, looking deep into the darkest alleys for any sign of ….stirring. But shadows remained shadows, and by midnight, the glare of Marijuku’s copious and brightly colored neon lights became downright antagonistic. 

At work the following morning, Bulma threw herself into Goku’s bullshit project, wishing every second of every moment all day long that she would have spent the night before sleeping instead of stalking this thing that did not want to be found. But every time she would lean her face a little too far into her hand, and her eyes closed just a little longer, and her breathing went a little too close to a snore, 18 was there to supply coffee. Not to chat. Not to help. Just silently dropping off a coffee with just enough Irish cream to bring her soul back to the living. 

Night came again, and despite feeling like death from lack of sleep all day long at work, Bulma grabbed her jacket and headed for the door. “You’re going out again?!” Yamcha said as she passed by the kitchen on her way to the front door.

“Yep! Don’t wait up!”

“So you’re just gonna walk out and leave me here alone?”

“I’ve got something to do. Don’t take it personally.”

“Well it’s kind of hard not to when you’re always abandoning me with the old man and the pig.” Yamcha snorted, taking no caution in lowering his voice, “Shows how high I am on your priority list.”

Bulma bit her lips together. She thought of all the things she wanted to say, all the things she could have said, unleash the rancor, verbally tear him limb from limb, but as she glanced over her shoulder to the living room, she saw Oolong place his hoof on Roshi’s shoulder and pat him delicately, then pull the blanket up to his chin like he always did when the old man fell asleep early watching TV. “Fine then. I won’t go.” She replied quietly, feeling the tiredness seep into her bones as she sat at the kitchen table watching Yamcha log into a fresh round of online gaming. 

“So . . . I think I’m almost ready to test this, and I have someone in mind to be the test subject—Roshi.”

“Aww c’mon Bulma, Roshi is . . . well, he’s old, hee hee.” Goku said with a cheesy smile, “There’s not much sparring I could do with him, even if he was fixed up.”

“He’s your Sensei, Goku. There’s always something you could learn from him.” Bulma said as she glanced up from her computer screen, “And besides, this thing may very well do nothing to humans. I mean, Humans and Saiyans may both be descended from primates, but we’re not the same. My goal on this trial is to test my theory that emulating the Saiyan power aura may greatly improve his degenerative disease.”

“Degenerative? I mean, I know he was a degenerate but is that really a disease?”

Bulma stared at Goku blankly. She narrowed her eyes slightly and shook her head, returning to the coding on her screen. “Spin disease. Degenerative spine disease. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind. That’s who I want to test this with. Take it or leave it.”

Goku turned away from Bulma and looked out of the large picture window just beyond her desk. He joined his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth on his very fine business shoes. He blew a breath out of his nose, then snaked his thick, rock-solid arms out of his sports jacket and hung it over his shoulder. He sank into 18’s empty chair and sulked, his lips curling and turning pouty before raising his arms and folding them behind his head, revealing a dark mass of underarm hair from out of the edge of the tattered, too short sleeves of his black and gray Gi. “Do we have to? I’ve already waited 4 days.”

“Four days is NOT a lot of time for this sort of thing, believe me. I’m not even sure that it will benefit him, I only know for sure that it won’t kill him.”

“Pffft fine. But after that, strong guys, right?”

“Strong guys.” Bulma said, her eyes briefly brushing over the length of Goku’s well-proportioned body, “And you shouldn’t take your jacket off in here, you know she thinks it’s unprofessional.”

“C’mon. It’s just me and you here, she’s not gonna know.” Goku said with a knowing smile, “She hasn’t harassed you anymore since Monday, so what’s the big deal? I got your back, don’t you trust me?”

“Goku it’s not a matter of trusting you, it’s a matter of falling in line with your wife’s rules. I may not agree with it, but I respect the fact that she’s trying to protect Capsule Corp’s interests.”

“I know what’s in Capsule Corp’s interests, and it’s you.” He said, catching Bulma’s backward glance, “I mean, the things you come up with, you know.”

“Let me test this on Roshi, and I’ll give you a folio with the results.”

“You’re the best, Bulma.” Goku said with a wink.

The following day, Bulma brought Roshi and Oolong through the doors of Capsule Corp. They waited patiently through several elevator changes until they could get on alone with Bulma to one side and Oolong on the other standing very close to the old man so as not to let him slouch or stumble, to keep up the appearance that he could stand upright, spare him the humiliation of hobbling. By the time they made it to the room where Bulma’s test equipment was prepped and ready, Roshi’s knees were knocking and his legs were wobbling like rubber bands. “You—you sure this thing’s not gonna fry off my good parts?” the old man chuckled.

“Ugh no it’s not gonna fry off your junk now stop being gross.” She said as she and Oolong worked systematically around the table to buckle him in, “And Oolong, you’re going to have to stay in the control booth with me. I don’t know what kind of effect this might have on . . . well, whatever you are.”

Oolong threw Bulma a dirty look before following dutifully behind her to the control booth where the two of them peered out at Roshi from the large picture windows overlooking the lab. “Don’t worry. The worst it could do is absolutely nothing.” Bulma said through the intercom. 

Roshi gulped as the equipment all around him began to hum. The lights dimmed to where Bulma and Oolong could no longer be seen. The only thing illuminated was a large piece of machinery like an oversized laser gun hanging from the ceiling pointed downward at him. The rounded tip of it sparked, gathering a yellowish beam of light that turned a subtle red, then blue, then a beautiful, sliverish white the outline of which rippled with iridescent waves that moved in time to the hum of the surrounding machines. Then, like a pot boiling over, the energy foamed and spread out over Roshi’s body, covering it in a protective dome. “Um, can he breathe under all that?” Oolong said as he nervously watched the clock.

“Uh huh.”

“Well, what if he can’t? Is there an emergency stop on this thing?”

“Nope. Can’t stop it mid cycle.”

Oolong gave a snort, “So what if he’s in there freaking out? What if his back spasms while he’s laying flat?? What if he really is getting fried in there??”

“Alllllmost done.” She said as her eyes quickly scanned over the numbers on the telemetry devices, “There!”

The force field over Roshi suddenly disintegrated with a sparkling crackle, with Bulma and Oolong rushing to his side as soon as the booth safety latch disengaged. They gave a shared gasp as they looked upon the old man who had barely been able to hobble to the booth only minutes before—He was sinewy but strong looking, his veins and muscles noticeably bulging. His beard was brilliant shade of white and his skin was not only clear, but tight, like a man of 20 or 30, not his actual real age. He gave Bulma a smile as she unbuckled his restraints, and instead of seeing weird hippo-like teeth, she could see that he had all of his teeth, and that they were straight and pearlescent as if they’d never seen a single grain of sugar. “So um, how do you feel?” She said as he hopped down from the table.

“Like a million buckaroos!!” Master Roshi said as he jumped up and clicked his heels together, bending and twisting at the waist, squatting and balancing on one foot to show off his strength and flexibility. “I don’t know how you did it Bulma but YOU DID IT!! I feel like I could run all the way from here to the nudie bar!!”

“This is unbelievable! Bulma this could revolutionize the way we treat everything from broken bones to hangnails! Think of all the millions of people that would give anything to be fixed up like this. If this pans out this well on others, you’re gonna be rich!”

“Capsule’s going to be rich.” Bulma said as she typed notes into her tablet, “So long as something is invented while I’m employed at Capsule Corp, it’s theirs. The invention belongs to them.’

“Well surely you’ll get some sort of kickback from it. A bonus? A promotion? Coupon for a free dinner at the noodle hut?”

Bulma shook her head. “don’t . . . count on it. Capsule keeps its profits. The only thing I get out of it is I get to keep my job, that’s all.”

“Well then looks like it’s up to us to repay you then!” Roshi cheerfully exclaimed, “What can we do for ya, pretty lady? Getcha a big teddy bear and a bouquet of flowers?”

“You don’t have to do anything for me, really. I’m just glad this thing could be used for something other than Goku’s stupid sparring ambitions.” She said as she continued making notes, pausing momentarily, distracted by the deep black in the background of her tablet wallpaper. “Actually guys . . . um, you know what never mind.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t worry about it, really it’s . . . it’s not your responsibility to deal with and not really something I should bother you with anyways.”

“Aw don’t be that way Bulma you practically made me brand new!” Master Roshi exclaimed.

“After all that, you gotta let us pay you back somehow! Anything you want Bulma, just ask, we’ll make it happen!” said Oolong. 

“Guys, it’s just . . .” she said, feeling her stomach tie in knots, “Ok . . . if you want to do a huge favor for me, here’s what you can do . . .” 


	6. 6. Capture the void! - Zarbon is not as he seems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma is determined to catch the void, but the Namekian children on the streets of Marijuku live in fear of an altogether different danger. 
> 
> \----------------------------------------------------------------------------




“Definitely not dress code compliant.” Bulma said as she took a good look at herself in the full length mirror—white T shirt cinched in tight at the waist by a thick black belt, khaki colored shorts with one leg long, the other cut at the hip, a military grade pistol holstered on her other hip and secured by garter, a bright metallic shoulder guard with the old style Capsule Corp logo. She hooked a wide pair of goggles around her neck and pulled on her fingerless gloves, then looked for something sturdy to place under the basement window, finding it in a plastic storage box from the closet. She tested her weight on the lid and opened the window. She hopped down and cracked open the door to her room and listened carefully. “C’mon Oolong,” she whispered, hesitating momentarily as she typed a text message to Zarbon, her thumb hovering over the send button on her phone, “Just do me this one favor . . . come on, please . . . “

“Hey Yamcha, my buddy Pilaf says you can run Romriot on a quad core processor running hyperiod graphics.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he said a Septacore was actually overkill and caused a lag on the graphics.”

“Well actually—”

Bulma quickly pressed send – _meet me at Frieza’s_. Her boots barely touched the plastic box as she leaped and pushed and scraped her way through the narrow basement window. She ran to the bike and waved her hand over the control panel, pushing it slowly and quietly onto the street, but once the sight of the house had completely disappeared in the side view mirrors, she fed the beast a little more fuel and opened up the throttle to where she could feel the fine purr of the mods she and 18 had made come vibrating through the handlebars just beneath her palms. The machine followed the hills and cloverleaf loops of the city streets with accuracy and power, banking curves smoothly like a ball on the rails and ramping up inclines with no loss of power. She entered the Marijuku district from the north this time, where plentiful banners with Namekian writing spanned the width of the cobblestone street, stacked like a slightly spread out deck of cards, competing with one another for attention along with the banners hanging from the windows and balconies and sides of the odd-shaped buildings of the old part of the city. She slowed the bike down as she passed under them, relishing the sweet, warm open air of night, the neon glare of Marijuku seeming more like home than some exotic foreign place. All the cheesy, run down internet cafes and ramshackle Yatai seemed as cheery as a warm fire or a welcoming group of friends. She rolled slowly through the noticeably thicker Thursday crowd, scanning faces and buildings and all the empty spaces in between, feeling herself drawn in her new found feeling of freedom to the small packs of children chasing each other through the crumbling palm tree planters. A light bump came to her rear wheel well. Out of instinct, she struck out her left arm and caught a little red oblong ball as it bounced up from the street. It was porous and light, made of some sort of alien material that took on an almost buyont quality in the lightness of earth’s atmosphere. “Gee, I’m sorry,” stammered a small voice next to Bulma’s knee, “We didn’t mean to hit you, honest!”

Bulma glanced down and saw a small Namekian boy wringing his hands. His antenna were drooped pitifully, and as he twisted his hands around, his long flowing robes got caught inbetween. “It’s ok. This thing’s been through worse” she said, “What’s your name?”

“Dende.”

“Nice to meet you, Dende.” She said, tossing the odd ball in a throw that unintentionally spiraled in big cartoony loops towards the boy, “Seems like a fun toy! What is it?”

“It’s a aHumYa!” He said, jumping up with his little short legs to catch it. “Back on my home world it’s kind of lame, but you can do all sorts of things with it here! It zips around way faster and you can squeeze it! Watch!!” He said, scrunching the ball to almost nothing in his fist, and just as fast as he let his fingers go it inflated again.

“That IS neat!” She said as he juggled the ball in weird patterns that seemed to warp gravity, “So it behaves different on earth than it did on Namek?”

“Yeah! Teacher says it’s because of gravi—graveltational—gravytational—”

“Gravitational pull?”

“Yah.” He said, giving his head such an affirmative nod that his antenna flopped forward.

“Well, that can make things lighter or heavier depending on the size of the planet. You were born on Namek, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do things seem heavier or lighter here?”

“Lighter. Much lighter.” He said with a cheery giggle, “I can jump really high here, watch!” the boy squatted on his short little legs and jumped straight up into the air, jumping as high as the seat of Bulma’s bike.

“Wow!”

“It’s good for getting away from the alligator monster when he comes by.”

“The alligator monster?” Bulma said, “What’s that?”

“The alligator monster comes out at night and eats little kids. It’s mean, and it likes us cuz it says we’re juicy.”

“What about the void?”

“The void?”

“You know, that thing, that . . . blank space, that dark cloud. I’ve heard it’s been snatching up Namekian kids playing out in the street.”

“No no, that’s the vant--well, I’ll get in trouble if I say it. The elders say you should never paint its name with your tongue.”

“You can tell me!”

Dende lowered his antenna, twisting and turning the ball nervously in his hands. “The . . . the Vanta bl— _black_ ” he said, whispering the word as if it were the worst swear word anyone could ever say, “It hates the alligator monster. It chases it away.”

“So it protects you, just like it protected me.”

Dende quickly shook his head. “No. i-i-it’s a monster too.”

“But what is it? Is it some sort of other alien or—"

“Wow look!! A human!” said another Namekian child, and soon a whole flock of Namekian children surrounded Bulma’s bike on all sides, eagerly clutching at her with their claw like hands, touching on the bike and her legs and her gun and her butt. “hey hey hey hey hey now – let’s dial it down a little here, guys.”

“You’re pretty!”

“Is this yours?!?!”

“Are you one of the receptacles or the depositors??”

“A what?” Bulma said, turning her head to the random child behind her.

“It’s a receptacle dummy, can’t you tell that? Receptacle humans are always pretty!”

“Receptacle ???”

“That’s what they told us in school!”

“There’s two types of humans.”

“Yeah, two types.”

“Receptacle and depositor.”

“Oh my god tell me you are not trying to say male and female.” She said, giving herself a facepalm, “Ok, well, that’s an ugly way to put it, but not . . . not entirely inaccurate. I keep forgetting you guys don’t have . . . errr, ummm . . . receptacles and depositors.”

“Do some humans have bigger receptacles?”

“Do you put things in your receptacle when it’s not being used???”

“Oh my god I am not getting into this conversation with a bunch of kids, really!” Bulma said, feeling her cheeks burn slightly red.

“Why are receptacles so pretty ? Why aren’t all humans pretty like receptacles ?”

“Yeah! If I was a depositor, I’d make myself pretty like a receptacle just so I wouldn’t look like a hairy square ape.”

“Ha Ha or super wimpy Saiyan!”

A collective, infectious giggle rippled across the band of Namekian kids. “Ok, ok—I get it. You don’t see very many humans on this side of town.” Bulma said as she peered through all the tiny green smiling faces looking for Dende, “Where did your little friend go?”

Just as the group of kids closed in a little tighter to Bulma’s cycle, a high-pitched scream peeled through the street beyond, echoing her own assault from the week before through her flesh. Her throat felt instantly constricted, her arms and legs limp. The group of kids scattered in all direction. A hefty thump thump thump came from the alley, and the remaining adults sitting behind the curtains of the Yatai and at the stools in the outdoor internet cafes all scrambled out of the way of the creature lumbering towards them. Bulma felt herself go white as the thing they were running from came into view—it was thick bodied and green skinned, three fingers on each hand ending in long purple claws that were holding the head and feet of a Namekian child as its long, powerful jaws bit into the child’s midsection, drawing pools of purple blood that stained the child’s pale, flowing robes. Bulma unholstered her laser pistol. She pointed it at the creature, set its sights right between it’s eyes and barked out, “Drop it!” before switching off the safety. It was through the sights that Bulma noticed the creature was wearing a very distinctive kind of jewelry over its head, and that it had a mop of long, flowing green locks cascading over its thick neck and shoulders. “Za—Zarbon?!” 

The creature gave a smile, dropping the child to the street where it quickly scrambled away to safety. “Bulma Briefs,” The creature said, its pronunciation hampered by the heaviness in its jowls, “I was hoping to savor your beauty in private, but no matter. Looks like we’re not going to make it to Frieza’s tonight after all.” He said, wiping the purple blood from the Namekian child off of his lips with the back of his hand, “Ah, human blood, Red blood . . . so much more nuanced. You’re making me hungry just looking at you.” He said as he lurched forward.

Bulma fired off a shot. The laser hit the line where the scales of his head began to crest and bounced off, hitting the building behind him, forcing bricks out of the building’s walls. Bulma took a shot again, this time hitting him in the chest and trunk, but each time, the energy blasts were merely deflected while the alligator monster lumbered forward with surprising speed, reaching its purple claws towards her, a wide and menacing smile on its face, drooling, its dark purple tongue wagging. 

“He won’t be out to save you. Recoome got sloppy.” He hissed.

“I don’t know who ‘he’ is, but . . . I’m not some helpless maiden that needs saving!” Bulma shouted, bending to the side slightly to tap the compartment beneath the saddle of the bike, unleashing the laser cannon to her waiting hands. With one smooth movement, Bulma cocked and mounted the laser cannon on her shoulder, blasting Zabon in the chest. The alligator creature sailed backwards, crashing into a noodle cart where a giant pot of boiling hot noodles came pouring down his face and body. 

Zarbon gave a scream. He jumped up to his feet and shook his head, wiping his face hand over hand to rid himself of the boiling liquid and pasta. “My face!! You marred my beautiful face!!” He screamed, “For that you will die slow!! Piece by piece I will dismember until there’s nothing beautiful left of you!!” Zarbon jumped straight up into the sky. A visible aura gathered around him, glowing with dark purple light. Suddenly the aura contracted, and Zarbon shot back down towards Bulma, moving with such speed that she had only time to shut her eyes and brace for impact. She squeezed her eyes shut, felt her body go stiff as she felt a sudden woosh, but, as though there were some barrier between them, she could sense and hear the impact fall a few feet away. She peeked open one eye, and between herself and the alligator monster stood the liquid presence of the void.

“You!” Zarbon hissed as he looked into the face of the void, “I should have known . . . When we were a team, you were always up his ass, although I never got what he saw in you. You’re trash, and ugly at that. Even the very smell of you is putrid!” Zarbon said as he shook his head quickly from side to side, slinging blood and drool all over the street, “Such a shame, what happened up there. The Namekians should have finished the job with you.”

The outline of the void roiled. The slightest evening breeze seemed to puff up and extend it’s volume. It grew until it nearly covered the area of Bulma’s sight, then died down again as the wind grew a little stronger and the sound of thunder murmured subtly overhead. The void hunched down and Zarbon followed suit, each of them taking on a fighting stance to confront one another. They flew at each other, and all at once the spreading darkness wrapped itself tightly around a more humanoid form, throwing punches and kicks with blinding savage and urgent speed. Zarbon snapped his jaws towards the head of the void, but it was the head most of all that remained ill defined—it was covered in high upward peaks that unfolded like the lotus petals of starless space, flickering like a black flame, the whole of it moving so swiftly and with such fluidity that it seemed to zip in and out of existence. Where Zarbon punched the air the void answered with a solid hit to his side then beneath to the jaw, knocking saliva and scales from his mouth until it was splattered all over the street. 

“You used her for BAIT!” Zarbon said as he pushed himself up from the street with his elbow, “You could have taken me that night, the night you first saw me with her but noooooo that’s not your style. Well let me tell you, that’s not gonna work for the rest of the Ginyu squad, you’ll see!! And even if you did manage to wipe us all out, what then? You’re still nothing but a slave! A SLAVE, DO YOU HEAR ME?! If not to him, to—AAGGGHHHH!!!!”

Zarbon’s speech was cut short as the void rushed in upon him, sacking him in the midsection, picking him up off the street. They wrestled in mid-air, tearing at each other until it seemed like they could rip apart the sky. A sudden cloudburst rushed down, soaking and sticking Zarbon’s long green locks to his scaly face and neck to mingle with the blood flowing from his broken jaw. Desperately he slashed out with his clawed hands, gripping the void as soon as his hands felt something solid to hang on to, but all at once the void turned, wrapping itself around Zarbon like a cyclone, “YOU’VE ALREADY LOST EVERYTHING, YOU HAVE NOTHING LEFT! WHAT DOES IT MATTER NOW?!?” he screeched, and a light flared up at his midsection, whiter and more brilliant than the lightning striking overhead. It moved in closer to Zarbon’s abdomen then exploded, disintegrating him in a slow, painful wave that allotted just enough time to squeeze the very last horrifying scream out of his fading existence. 

The Namekian children gave a collective cheer. They pumped their little fists in the air jumped around in their hiding places until the void descended back to earth. The kids quickly hid themselves under boxes and rubble as the void touched upon the ground, but Bulma did not flinch. She lowered her laser cannon to her side and whispered, “What are you?” before the void turned its stark, inky face over its shoulder towards her and bolted off, down the darkest, most desolate street it could locate. “Not this time, buster!!” Bulma said as she quickly slapped the laser cannon back into the undercarriage. She stood up on the footpegs and swiped her hand over the instrument panel, revving the machine up to the full extent of its mods. She took off after the void with the engine to the bike growling, echoing off the streets of Marijuku with a force that rivaled the thunder overhead. Out of instinct, she prowled the serpentine alleyways, searching for the darkest, most foreboding path with the confidence of a hunter closing in on her prey. In the 8th block she caught the slightest glimpse of it. By block 9 buildings weren’t buildings anymore but just a mad blur, only the void ahead. Bulma pulled the scanning screen down from the arching roof the bike and attempted to lock in on the entity, but the screen showed only millions of dots scattered like all around the humanoid center, as if she were looking at a swarm of bees or ants or flies. She slapped the screen back into the dome as she narrowly missed a dumpster, momentarily losing ground but momentarily to something as fast as the void was all that was needed for it to slip away. The anger in Bulma’s heart grew. She pushed the bike to a speed so high that the engine gave off a loud whining sound made that much louder as they dived into a paved underground trench where the highway out of Marijuku folded neatly under the highway in. Sheltered from the rain, the bike surged forward. The void once again was just beyond the bumper. She leaned her belly into the bike and tried to make herself more aerodynamic. She retracted the overhead arch to the bike as they headed up the ramp leading back above ground. She hovered her hand just above the eject button, having just enough time to feel the white hot fear burn up what little remained of her common sense before slamming her hand down on it and propelling herself off of the bike and into the cloud of the void, catching it with both hands. But the void was oddly slick—the rain beaded and rolled over it as though it too feared to touch the infinite darkness. Bulma slipped over the surface and let out a little scream as the foolishness of her actions flashed through her mind in visions of broken bones and a broken skull and a lost life ended in such a sad, desperate way, but suddenly, instead of Bulma gripping the void, the void gripped her, wrapping its arms around her, turning so that the back of it skidded into the rough surface of the pavement, plowing a straight line through the asphalt until finally coming to a halt at the crest of the hill. 

Bulma shivered and panted. She was laying ontop of the heaving void, moving up and down in time to its heavy breathing. With her ear to the void’s chest, she heard a groan emanate deep from within. She sat up, looked down, deep into where beads of rain were circling, making whirlpools where eyes should have been, seeing just the barest hint of the bridge of a nose, a prominent brow line, and a tightly closed mouth. Cautiously, she reached her hand down to it and brushed her palm over the broad plain just beneath the eye, revealing a bare, wheat-colored cheek, then a chin. She smoothed both hands over the eyebrows and wiped her thumbs over a thin ridge of eyelashes that opened to reveal one black eye and one split, silver eye.

“You . . . “ she said, and the man beneath her defiantly turned his face to the side like a pouting child. “What—why? Why are you doing this? Any of this?” She said, and the dishwasher sat up, coming face to face momentarily with her before turning his shoulder between them and standing, plopping her butt first onto the street. The dishwasher reached his hand to his bicep and grunted, rotating it with much effort until it seemed to catch or pop. He stumbled forward slightly, trying very hard to keep his wincing face hidden. “What if I told you I could heal you. That shoulder, that eye—I could give them both back.”

The dishwasher paused. He raised his eyebrow and turned his face over his shoulder before ducking his head down in pain. He bit his lip, his breath catching until he closed his mouth tight and forced his breathing through his nostrils. He grunted a few more times, rotated his arm smoothly and gave a small sigh of relief before staring deep into Bulma in a way that seemed to smolder and burn. “I’m being serious I could do this. I work for Capsule Corp—we have a machine. I used it to heal a friend with a terminal bone marrow disease. He could barely walk across the lobby at work without assistance and now---A-a-an eye wouldn’t take much. Neither would a shoulder.”

The dishwasher softened his stare. He hung his head slightly and turned away, adjusting something in the upper chest region of his body that caused the darkness to roil out around him again like a cape or a long flowing robe. He took a few steps away from her and Bulma shouted, “I’m not going to stop until I get an answer. It’s not like I don’t know where to find you. You saved my life the other night and to be honest, I don’t want to go around with that kind of debt hanging over my head, I – well, that’s the last thing I need in my life, is more debt.” She said with a pained, forced little chortle. She crossed her arms high over her breasts, squeezing her arms into her body hard so he would not notice her chilled shiver. “C’mon just . . . let me at least make it even.” She said as her chin began to quiver. 

The dishwasher shook his head, making a dismissive gesture by swinging out his hand before him. He opened his mouth and a stifled sound came out, but just as quickly as it was made, the sound was quelched by his gnashing teeth. He tightly closed his lips. He balled his fists as if secretly cursing himself and turned his scowling face away from her. 

“The guy at the art shop said that you’re a prince.” She blurted out, and the dishwasher turned his face to her with a look that pronounced very loudly his deep sense of offense. He gave a smallish jump off the pavement, hovering a few feet off the ground, darkness spreading all around himself. “P-p-please don’t-don’t run away!” she said as the deep chill shook her body violently all over. “Can’t I at least know your name??”

But the void did not answer. He rubbed his hand over his face and the wheat colored tone of his skin disappeared into darkness with only the bright whites of his eyes glaring out at her before taking to the sky.

“Fine. I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.” She said beneath her shivering breath, following the dark spot with her eyes until it disappeared into the night.


	7. Doom on the dotted line - a friendship is tested at Capsule Corp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma's sleepless night turns into a pleasant morning, but will things take a turn at Capsule Corp?
> 
> \--------------------
> 
> Just so that you know ahead of time, I'm posting this chapter tonight, then another chapter shortly after. I have this super bad habit of pacing this story S L O W, and I want to thank those of you who have been reading it for sticking with it while it moves rather S L O W, but I think you'll find things picking up from here on out. I almost hate to unleash this chapter at a time like this with everything that's going on in the world, but the chapter after this is going to be a little more fun ;) THANK YOU for all the kind comments you've been leaving me ! Stay safe and healthy out there, friends !
> 
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7.

All night long Bulma tossed and turned. There were no dreams, only unsettling flashes of events from the night before—of purple blood in the street and the screams of a child, of the roaring, thunderous mass swooping down upon an alien whose face changed from reptilian to ethereal over and over again in her mind, the all-encompassing color of black, a face uncovered by the swipe of her hand, studded by a wounded eye, the hate and hostility in her hero’s face as he turned and flew away. 

At 6am she gave up the struggle to sleep and walked upstairs to the kitchen in her way oversized t-shirt, socks and panties. The blinds were open, the young morning sun was pouring in, and instead of the kitchen being empty and cold, it was busy with the sound of Oolong and the Turtle Hermit making strawberry pancakes and coffee. They pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and presented it to her as if she were royalty. They ate together while the birds sang and the morning wind blew soft through the thin white curtains, and almost as quickly as they cleared their plates, Roshi and Oolong rushed back to their rooms, changing out of their pajamas and into decent clothes, off to find a day’s work while Yamcha remained asleep in her bed. 

And after all the dishes has been cleaned off and sorted, Bulma shed her oversized shirt and socks and panties still with Yamcha sleeping, not once even stirring while she was standing naked just inches beyond his dangling foot. She looked down to him on the bed and sighed, dressing herself in the clothes of casual Friday before heading out the door a full 20 minutes earlier than she usually did. She arrived at Capsule Corp at the unheard of hour of 7:40am, and didn’t think twice of ChiChi’s presence on her floor until the other woman’s pouty face tightened and her arms crossed and their eyes locked. “I’m here in plenty of time.” Bulma said with the slow shake of her head as Chichi and her entourage of middle managers approached her desk like an invading army. “Wha-what’s going on?”

“Goku would like to see you in his office. Now.” Chichi replied robotically.

18 raised an eyebrow and turned her head. She met eyes with Bulma just long enough to see her deskmate turn an odd shade of white before she was wisked away by Chichi and the men in suits. She hooked her hair behind her ear and noticed herself clenching her jaw, a twitch to her eye, heartrate raising to a speed that made her wonder if a self-diagnostic was in order, a feeling of foreboding overtaking logic as Bulma and the others disappeared down the long hallway. 

And inside Bulma’s body, her heart was flopping around like a fish pulled onto a dock—she would have gasped for air if she hadn’t been so determined not to let them know how hard she was freaking out inside. She instead chose to direct her breath entirely through her nose, clinging to the small, cool sips of oxygen in her sinuses as they boarded the elevator together and rode it to the top floor, each floor passed like a countdown to the end of her life. When the doors opened, the men in suits and ChiChi poured out into the room—it was sleek and sparse with dark reflective surfaces on the ceiling and the floor and mirrored windows all around. It was here that Bulma really noticed just how scuffed and tattered and discolored her red sneakers really were, just how blue her wild hair looked against the cold gray of Goku’s office. 

“Leave us.” Goku said gently, and the middle managers re-boarded the elevator, leaving only ChiChi, Bulma and himself. “Something’s been brought to my attention, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.” He said, leaning down into his chair like a sulking teenager, his dark expression glowering out from behind his hands, which he held out in front of himself with the pads of his fingers touching, forming an inverted V, “It’s very disappointing. Thought we were friends.”

“What do mean? Of course we’re still friends what are you—”

ChiChi grabbed the side of her suit and reached in, producing a folded piece of paper which she slapped to Goku’s desk with a force that made Bulma raise her hand to the side of her face. “You used your corporate credit card for a personal purchase.” She said, “A card that we gave to you in trust that it would only be used for travel and other business expenses. You’re stealing from us and now I finally have the proof on paper!”

“Stealing?! ChiChi no, look – I was at the tire shop and I—I must have got my cards mixed up. I can pay it as soon as I get my next paycheck. I wasn’t trying to pull anything I promise!”

“If only it were that simple.” She spat out, “We have inventory missing, Bulma. Inventory from our testing labs. Instruments and inventions that are proprietary and prerelease to Capsule Corp have passed through our doors without our consent! Do you ANY idea HOW damaging this could be to us?!”

“Look it was . . . kind of a stupid thing for me to do, I admit. I was just,” Bulma said, pausing as she rubbed her hand over the back of her neck, “I was in pursuit of something and . . . I needed some extra power, that’s all. I didn’t---I didn’t use anything that hasn’t already been released to the public, I promise you. But yes I—I modded my bike. For completely selfish and stupid reasons, I modded my bike with Capsule Corp owned equipment. I apologize. This wasn’t a big deal when my father—”

Chichi crossed her arms a little tighter and hardened her glare. She was just about to open her mouth to speak when Goku slowly and steadily raised his hand to silence her. “I have to treat every employee here the same, Bulma. We’re friends, yes. Your father was the founder of Capsule Corp, yes. But that doesn’t mean you should be treated any differently than any other Capsule Corp employee. I don’t want to do this, but—”

“Woah woah woah wait a minute wait a minute—I’m on the verge of something big Goku, something really big. Ok I may have played lose with my corporate credit card and with our equipment and I apologize for that but . . . look I ran a test on Master Roshi the other night and if you could have only have seen—”

“It’s TOO LATE for that!” ChiChi snipped, and once again Goku raised his hand to silence her, slicing his hand upward in the air with all five fingers held snugly together.

“Can it make strong guys even stronger?”

“I-I don’t know.” Bulma said with a subtle shake of her head, “I won’t know until I try it on one. But if it can do what it did to Roshi to a healthy person it’s . . . it’s very likely it could bestow a extraordinary amount of strength.” She said, swallowing the lump in her throat as her voice began to waver. “I haven’t . . . I really haven’t had the time to get everything done with it that needs to get done.” She said, gasping audibly as Chichi produced a manila file and a pen and pushed it towards Goku, opening it to a paper with the word TERMINATION printed boldly at the top. “I have someone—I have someone in mind who I think would be . . . a really great candidate. He just. I need. Goku please. I have so many depending on me in my house right now. With things the way they are right now, I can’t afford to go without a job.”

Goku scooped the pen up in his hand. He clicked the top of the pen in and out, his eyes fixed into the trembling figure before him. He touched the tip of it to the dotted line, then tilted his head towards ChiChi and said, “Can you give us a moment?”

Chichi’s eyes narrowed. She tucked her chin up high in the air and looked down over the top of her cheek to Bulma before exiting. As the elevator doors closed gently behind her, Goku took his pen off of the paper and sat back in his chair. He closed the file and slid it to the side of his desk. He stood and straightened his gray business Gi with a tug from the bottom, turning to glance out of the window to the street below. “So who is this strong guy? Anyone I would know?”

“I . . . I actually don’t even know his name. He’s someone I met Downtown. You wouldn’t know him.”

“So not Tien . . . or Roshi. Some other guy, right?”

“Right.”

“And he’s strong?”

“Very. He’s shorter than you, so he’s not a pound for pound match but . . . b-b-but I’ve seen what he’s capable of. I think he would make a very exciting opponent if he were to be brought up to your level, and I don’t think that would take much.”

“Then . . . let’s see what happens. Leave. Take the rest of the day off. I’m not going to sign the papers, but I’m not going to throw them away either. Do a good job on this and I may be able to negotiate with the board for you to stay. But for now, just leave. I don’t think it would do any good for you to work if you’re shaken up like that.”

“Thanks, Goku.” she said to Goku’s back as he remained firmly facing the window. She hung her head and tucked her hands into her pockets, her eyes lifting up to him one more time as she boarded the elevator. She saw his face for the brief moment he turned his head over his shoulder before the elevator doors closed. Alone, the sight of his face burned just behind her closed eyes seemed to set off a molitov cocktail of emotions inside. Feelings of guilt and sadness, relief and remorse clashed and roiled around in a stomach lightened by the swift downward motion of the elevator to a point where she almost felt like she could vomit. She wrapped her arms around her midsection and exited on the engineering floor where every face and every pair of eyes anxiously turned to greet her. A collective murmur flowed like a wave throughout the department, punctuated by 18 who jumped out of her seat and planted both hands flatly on she and Bulma’s shared desk. “What happened up there??” She said, mindfully calibrating the sound of her voice, “We were all deeply concerned.”

“You—you had reason to be. Hey look, I don’t mean to be rude but I gotta leave. I’ll see you on Monday, ok?”

Bulma gathered a few items from her desk and scooped them into her backpack with arms and hands that felt hollow and weak. She exited the building as quickly as she could, feeling the same sickness she felt in the elevator rise up in her stomach again at the sight of her bike in the garage, with Capsule Corp emblazoned on all it’s obvious mods. Cars and trucks passed her by silently as she drifted through the city streets stunned, unable to think or feel anything other than the white hot fear of losing the one thing in her life that had been steady and good. She returned home, floating through the door and to the couch, her head in a fog, nothing feeling real. “Oh hey, you’re home early.” Yamcha said as he walked through the house with an open jar of pickles, “Did you have the day off?”

“No.” she replied distantly, as if saying it to him from some far off planet.

Yamcha shrugged his shoulders and walked away, dripping pickle juice all over the floor behind him. Alone in the thick quiet of the living room, Bulma pulled Roshi’s flannel blanket up to her chin and sat blankly in front of the powered off TV.


	8. **The Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still reeling from the close call in Goku's office, Bulma gets a mysterious text, but will a Saturday adventure bring her too close to something she'd rather forget?
> 
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> 
> So originally I had written chapters 7 & 8 together as one big chapter, but I kind of felt like that would make things incredibly long, especially when it's being read in mobile format. I wrote a 450 page erotica [that I'm very, very close to getting published btw] and was shocked to learn that the ideal page count for books within that genre are 200-250 pages--anything beyond that generally doesn't get bought ! 
> 
> a little more backstory in this chapter. Plus some fun with our 'other' favorite girl >:) Enjoy :) !!!!
> 
> BTW - if you're not following my on Tumblr, you should (same name). Not only do I post a lot of Vegebul related stuff, but all of my chapters are tagged with certain songs from youtube that I used to set the mood for writing that particular chapter. For example, the song that goes with this chapter is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM7Byt8JkK4   
> 
> 
> \-----------------------------

8.

The next day, before the full horror of what had happened the day before could settle in and plummet her into despair, Bulma received a text message from a number she did not recognize:

_I want to go shopping in the Marijuku district_

_I’ve never been there before. Will you go with me?_

And in exactly 30.0 minutes, 18 was at her doorstep sharply dressed in a long sleeved shirt with thin black pinstripes on a white background making rings up her arms and abdomen like vector lines on the blueprints of one of her robots. She wore a tight jean skirt and matching denim vest, black leggings that were sleek and form fitting from the gap in her thighs all the way down her slender calves. It gave Bulma pause for thought as she stepped up to the threshold to meet her, that the outfit she was wearing wasn’t so new or flattering, that she would be going out to stores with her coworker with next to no money in her pockets. “18 are you sure? I mean, I’ve never been there during the day and . . . maybe my tastes are not um . . . you know, maybe it’s not as high end as yours. I don’t know what kind of stores they have, it could be all junk!”

“Whatever. Let’s go.”

So she waved goodbye to Yamcha, who gave a slight roll of his eyes and a weak wave back, and sat down in 18’s sleek luxury car. It was all leather and chrome inside with absolutely no dust, dirt or debris in plastic spaces or in any of the thick stitches that ran up the sides of the seats. A broad command center took up most of the dash with a screen that played graphics that changed in time to the synthwave beats playing through the speakers. “I can’t believe they threatened to fire you.” 18 said as she shifted the car in a lower gear to overtake the driver in front of her, “The nerve.”

Bulma shrugged her shoulders, “It’s a business. What I did was stupid. I got so caught up in this whole Void thing I just . . . I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Soooooo what happened with that? Were you successful in catching it?”

“Actually, yes.”

“And?”

“It was nothing. Just . . . a random alien, you know . . . taking care of alien business. Not as mysterious as all that I don’t guess.”

18 shifted her eyes to their corners briefly to look at her friend. She cut through the streets in a direct way that made Bulma feel as though she had been traveling to Marijuku all wrong, but as they came upon the edge of the district, they were both taken by surprise at just how crowded it was with Aliens and humans alike. Bulma ordinarily did not enjoy crowds, but the shoulder to shoulder bustle, the harmonious joviality of Yardrat music, the scent Zeebodon candy and lovely magenta clouds of blessing bombs from Namekian street preachers made Marijuku a joy to be in on a warm and sunny Saturday. The feeling of apprehension soon gave way to wonder as the streets she was used to seeing as empty in the darkness were full of jewelry pagodas and racks of things to wear in the light. Even 18 seemed to be enjoying just being in with the flow of the crowd, but as soon as the first storefront with lithe mannequins dressed in West City’s finest came into view, 18 suddenly lock stepped quickly into it, darting off without warning, leaving Bulma temporarily lost and disoriented at losing her friend in the crowd. She ducked her head all around before catching sight of 18’s snowy, platinum blonde hair inside the open-air store. She was throwing outfit after outfit over her arm, snatching them up like a looter in a riot, and as soon as her arms were full, she piled all of them onto the store counter and pulled her credit card from her wallet. “Heyyyyyyyyyy um—aren’t you going to try any of these on first?” Bulma said as the overwhelmed store clerk began to sort through the pile of clothes. 

“Try them on? Here? I don’t think they’ll let me.”

“Well of course they’ll let you! Every store that sells clothes has a fitting room!”

“Oh. A fitting room.” She repeated as she calculated the idea in her brain.

“Right. My sister Tights and I used to spend whole afternoons just trying on outfits. We would parade up and down the fitting room hall and pose in front of the mirrors like we were in a fashion show! Surely you’ve done that before!” She said, turning to the store clerk. “Say, where are your fitting rooms?” 

The clerk showed them to a room in the back of the store. It was a posh, overly girly chamber decorated in padded pink satin with tiny diamond shaped mirrors embedded in each divet. There were cascades of artificial flowers in decorative sconces on the wall, forming the separation between changing booths. There was a trifold mirror beneath a canopy of sheer and sparkling pink material and pink velvet benches situated all around the room. “Alright. Go in. Try it on. Show me.” She said, pointing 18 in the direction of the stalls with the rose colored swinging doors, and in the time it took for the doors to stop swinging, 18 had already changed into a pair of high waisted, acid washed jeans that were noticeably tight in the ass with a cashmere top that seemed to just barely cover her full and shapely breasts. She took a turn and did a playful pose, turning her back to her friend as she fluffed up her hair. “Wow 18 that is breathtaking! Come down here and look at yourself in the big mirrors!” 

18 approached the mirror holding her breasts and chin high. She rubbed her hand over her hip, then down over the broad, curvy side of her buttocks, delighting in the very pronounced, feminine shape. She rushed back into the changing room and quickly changed yet again into a outfit similar to what Bulma had worn the night before, with a pair of pants that had one leg long and the other short, with many small belts and pockets and garters decorating the long leg, a tight black T shirt tucked into the belt that has long sleeves that made her arms look longer and more willowy. “Try some on with me!” She said, “I’m positive I have some in your size!”

“Oo-k.” Bulma said as 18 took her by the hand and pulled her into the dressing room, gasping slightly as 18 quickly pulled off her T shirt and jeans and stood in her thong underwear before her. Soon the two women were both in their underwear, giggling like two school girls as they changed and exchanged and compared crazier and crazier mismatched outfits. They took turns strutting out to the mirrors at the end of the hall, cheering each other as they flashed cleavage or popped a hip out to the imaginary audience. Bulma reached her hand out to 18’s hair and piled it high on her head in a pretty, sloppy bun as she stood before the mirror in a white bohemian top with big fluffy sleeves and broad lace up the arms. “You—you can do that?” 18 said, touching her own face as it became framed by the delicate strands of hair hanging down all around. 

“Of course silly! You can do anything you want with it, it’s your hair!” Bulma replied as she leaned over 18’s shoulder. 

“it’s beautiful.” She said as she laid her hand on Bulma’s face, pressing the two of them together cheek to cheek. “I feel so much more . . . human.”

“Me too.” Bulma said, leaning her head into 18’s, relishing the cool feeling of the girl’s skin on hers, “Sometimes girls just need to do these things.”

“I’m buying that outfit you’re wearing by the way. You’re walking out of here wearing it.”

“What, this??”

“Blue’s your color. The blue in that top, the gold on the shoulders, the white breastline—it’s perfect and I’m not letting you take it off.”

Bulma blushed slightly. “Well what do you want me to do with my old outfit?”

“Stuff it in the bag. They can use the wand to scan your tags. C’mon let’s go find shoes!!”

So Bulma left with a small shopping bag stuffed with her old clothes, and 18 left with 3 bags of new outfits and a 4th with her old clothes, and when they stepped out onto the Marijuku street all eyes flew to them as though they were the most beautiful women in the city. They tried on every shoe in the shoe store and bought heels and flats and mules and boots. They bought iced coffee and little spongy sweet cakes in animal shapes. They stuffed money in the hundreds of rows of vending machines like high rollers in a casino, getting plushies and stuffies and trashy panties that 18 teasingly begged Bulma to change into so she could see. 

Late in the afternoon, after their shopping debauchery had reached a high and was finally dwindling down, the two of them came dangerously close to a part of Marijuku that made Bulma’s heart beat faster than she wanted to admit. She felt the broad smile she had kept on her face all day long start to fade and darken as 18 aggressively ate up the clothing rack siting almost directly in front of Frieza’s, where he was undoubtedly working. She hesitantly stepped up to the curb next to her friend and pawed through the clothes, hoping to distract herself with the chunky, funky sweaters of the vintage fashion thrift shop. She turned her head over her shoulder again and again, warily watching the door of the restaurant behind her. She took a deep breath and chose to politely ignore the sound of Namekian children behind her as they chased each other through the street, resisting the urge to see if Dende or any of the others from the night before were among them. It was ridiculous to think that he would ever set foot outside of Frieza’s, not when there were tables to bus, not when there were early dinner orders pouring in from tourists and hungry Yardrats wandering in from a long day of Marijuku fun, but when she heard the children’s laughter interrupted by a growl and the swat of a broom, she turned her head and looked behind her, and he was there, turning his face to her at the same time as if the two were magnetized, his black and silver eyes touching her blue from the distance of a city street, a frozen heartbeat, a shared memory of close bodies in the rain. 

Bulma quickly turned her attention back to the rack of clothes in front of her. She jerked pants and coats and skirts to the side. She cursed the burn in her cheeks and tried to recall how smooth and cool 18’s had felt when they were being girls and trying on clothes in the dressing room, but like a creeping darkness, she could still feel his dark stare clouding up behind her, a void of sadness and anger overshadowing, the touch of his slick black body beneath her palms, the feel of his breath rising and falling. She peeked over her shoulder just long enough to see him doing the same as he opened the door to Frieza’s and disappeared back inside. 

18 glanced at the building across the street and back to her friend. “You keep looking over there. What is it?”

“Hmm? Oh um . . . just . . . some place. It’s nothing.” She said as she twisted the pricetag to a shirt around loosely in her hand, “Actually it is . . . something. Would it be super rude of me if I were to maybe dash in that restaurant over there? I mean, I don’t think I’d be in there long. I-I’m not getting anything to eat I’m just . . . there’s somebody I want to talk to.”

“Take your time. Now that I know I can try these on, I might just try on all of them!”

“Thanks 18.” 

Bulma smoothed her hands over her new shirt. She stood straight and tall in her lace up boots and marched towards Frieza’s. Inside the restaurant was even more desolate than it typically was at night with Frieza at the bar slowly leafing through an oversized fashion magazine and one Namekian customer tucked away in a corner booth in human street clothes and headphones pulled over his ears. The dishwasher came forth from the kitchen. Without so much as even glancing her way, he set a broom to the floor and vigorously swept up a line, moving opposite of the direction she was standing. Bulma quickly trotted ahead, cutting through the empty tables to face him. “Hi.” Bulma said, and the dishwasher swiftly turned away. “Look, maybe I got a little aggressive in pursuing you, maybe . . . maybe I’m kind of backpeddling on my promise to leave you alone but . . . There’s something I want to ask of you. It’s something that would benefit us both.”

The dishwasher turned his shoulder and swept the floor as though he were trying to sweep away the floorboards. He knocked the brushcap into the legs of the chairs and bumped the tables, chasing dust away as vigorously as he wished to do away with her. 

“I’m not your enemy. If I came on strong then I apologize but, well, you know, it’s a little unusual for someone to go around the city in a costume swooping up alligator monsters and I was curious. Didn’t know it was you.” She said as she folded her arms beneath her breasts, “Can’t I at least know your name?”

The dishwasher turned again. He walked a straight line head down to a small rack on the wall that he slapped the broom into, exchanging sweeper for busser, giving Bulma an up and down look with his one good eye glaring before slinging a white dishrag over his shoulder and pushing by her as though she were just another empty chair. 

“I’m not leaving here until I’ve had some sort of answer from you. I told you, I could heal you.” She said, feeling her irritation rise. “What, you don’t believe me? Do you not trust pretty girls?” she said, rubbing her hand over the hip of her tight fitting jeans in much the same way as she had seen 18 do in the mirror, “I could change your life If you’d just . . . HEY goddamnit will you just listen to me for a moment?? Why won’t you talk to me?!”

Bulma reached her hand out to the Dishwasher’s arm and he immediately and violently recoiled, dropping the busser, filling the largely empty restaurant with the sound of breaking dishes. He glared at her with a kind of hate that made her feel small and insignificant, like a peasant touching a king.

“Oh dear, are the monkeys engaged in some sort of spat? Tsk tsk.” Frieza said as he slowly and languidly turned the pages of the fashion magazine before him. 

“I don’t know, would you call it at spat when all the other person does is stare holes through you?” She said, returning the Dishwasher’s glance. 

“Pff well it’s not as though he could do much else.” Frieza replied, “Wait . . . don’t tell me.” He said as he suddenly slapped his magazine shut, “Ho Ho tell me, surely you—have you not noticed?”

“Noticed what? That he’s a king sized jerk??”

“Well, not in his lifetime anyway.” Frieza mumbled, sliding his heavily lined eyes towards the dishwasher, who was furiously scrubbing the table before him. “Monkey, don’t you think it would be wise to show her?”

The dishwasher paused. He squeezed the rag in his hand until it bled water all over the surface of the table, the high spikes of his hair seeming to bristle as his eyes narrowed and teeth ground together within his tightly clenched jaw.

“You’ll have to forgive him. You see, even after everything he’s been through—we’ve been through—he still clings to his pride. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he wouldn’t find a way to tell you. Oh monkey, why don’t you forget that whole stink and just show her? If we’re going to be stuck in this forsaken backwater then you might as well make some little monkey friends. Can’t do that if they all think you’re some sort of jerk, which you are, however . . . “ He said. He leaned his butt against the bar and folded his arms, eyes zeroed in exclusively on the dishwasher, “Open your mouth.” He said with a kind of authority to his voice that reminded Bulma that he claimed to once be an emperor, “Now, Monkey. Show the girl.” 

The dishwasher straightened himself until he was standing upright. He shifted his eyes slowly from Bulma to Frieza, lingering on the little gray man for quite some time before shifting back to her. He crossed his arms and sank into a nearby chair, but little by little, his defensive arm crossing seemed to disintegrate into something more like someone holding themselves out of comfort or pain. His arms slid down until they shielded his midsection. He bent at the waist slightly until his arms disappeared behind the high pile of his chest. His lips parted, then as if the flash of second thought crossed his mind, he tilted his face away from the two of them and smooshed his lips against his own shoulder.

“You see Bulma, he hasn’t told you his name, or his problem, any of his problems . . . because they cut out his tongue.” Frieza casually rattled off as he reopened his magazine, “It was the price he paid . . . for his life, for the artifact, no one should feel sorry for him over that. Of course he wouldn’t put it that eloquently--Prince or no, he’s still a clod-headed Saiyan.”

“You’re a Saiyan.” Bulma repeated breathlessly, “Oh. My. Kami.”

“Oh don’t tell me you didn’t notice that either, and here I thought you were the smart one! The ears, the brows, the flight . . . the near invincibility! What would ever make you think he was human?” Frieza said with a giggle, “It was QUITE the horrid scene when they cut the tongue out—do you have any IDEA how hard it is to cut something off of a Saiyan with that tough skin? I had to listen to him groan with that nasty stump gurgling around in his mouth for days after it happened. And if that wasn’t enough they let him hang on a spike made of stone—just cut, spike, groan. He was impaled through the shoulder . . . all that blood just oozing from his mouth and arm, all of us saw it—they made us witness it, guess they wanted to prove a point. It was the first time in a long time that I felt a sense of pity, and I’ll never forgive them for making me feel such a bullshit emotion . . . over _him_ of all people! I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish unless they were going off of this whole Saiyans-get-stronger-at-near-death theory—certainly didn’t work, I mean, look at him he’s utterly broken. At least when I blew up planets, I made it quick and clean . . . never bothered with this torture stuff. Would have been relatively simple to patch him up in a healing pod but, then we all ended up down here, where space travel is . . . . well, apparently not all that casual. Humans have barely evolved beyond transportation by animal carts.” He said as he stopped on one particular page of the magazine and held it a little closer to his face, “Oh would you look at that shade of yellow on her! I do so envy the human ability to wear such a color without looking like more of a total ignoramus.” 

“I-I didn’t know.” Bulma stammered, “You’re the son of King Vegeta.”

“Umm hmmm, his namesake, crown Prince Vegeta, Prince of all Saiyans. Now a dishwasher in this lovely earth slum.” Frieza said indifferently as he lifted the edge of a perfume advertisement and sniffed it, “Oh that’s not going to do anything to cover up human stink, that just makes it worse. Ugh. Could you imagine? Wait, is this for depositors??” 

“Vegeta” Bulma said, and the dishwasher lifted his head towards her, split silver eye gently glimmering before lowering back to the floor. The door to the restaurant opened. From behind the glare of sunset came the silloutte of 18, whose icy eyes cut through the stale gloom of Frieza’s like a blast of winter air. “I’m sorry to intrude. You seemed to be taking a while.”

“Sorry 18, that’s my fault, really. I’m almost done. I—I-if you want to get the car, I’ll be out in just a minute.”

18 scanned the room. Her eyes touched upon Frieza, but lingered on the humanoid male, whose hair structure and skin color were strongly reminiscent of--“No problem. Just be ready, it’s a no parking zone.”

Bulma nodded her head. She turned her attention back to Prince Vegeta as he sulked with his head down and his body slouched. “No one’s there on the weekends. If we’re going to do this, we need to do it tonight.” She said, “Let me change out of these clothes. I have a keycard and clearance, I can go in the building whenever I need, no questions asked. My boss is a Saiyan, Goku, just like you.”

“T’ch.” Vegeta sounded, turning his head to the side as if he’d received a slap to the face.

“Oh he’s familiar. Believe me, we all are.” Frieza said with a pronounced vocal fry to his voice, “Namek was quite the game changer . . . for all of us, no thanks to your ‘boss’. But monkey, about the events on Namek . . . you need to think long and hard about this human’s proposition. Healing certain wounds could break the covenant.”

“The covenant?” Bulma repeated quizzically as the light reflection from 18’s car moved through the dinning room of the restaurant like a laser scanner, “Midnight. Capsule Corp. I’ll be on the front lawn. Hope you can see in the dark because if you turn on a light, the cops will be there handing out tickets. The procedure is painless—if a frail old man can do it, then what do you have to be afraid of? Be there . . . unless you’re some sort of big coward.”


	9. Royal reign of Terror - Awaken the beast within!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma attempts to use the Capsule Corp healing machine on Vegeta, but will the treatment have unintended side effects?
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> :) enjoy !
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9.

Bulma rushed straight to her room in the basement from the front door. She changed out of her new outfit and into her street clothes. She dipped her fingers into her lab coat, grabbed her keycards and pulled her tattered red sneakers from the bag she had brought home from shopping, slipping them on effortlessly before heading back up the steps. She wooshed into the bathroom and checked over herself in the mirror. She felt a strong, strange urge to style her hair, to spray it with hairspray and add a little flip, or puff it out with curls. She instead hastily changed out the posts in her ears for bright silvery hoops, and in a mad fit of daring swathed her lips in glossy, baby pink lipstick, recalling a tender moment earlier in the day where she did the same for 18, in the makeup shop as they pampered themselves with glittery eyeshadow and highlighter and lipstick in samples of colors they’d never wear in real life. She smooshed her lips together and rushed back towards the front door. She had only just stepped through the threshold to the cool, dark air of the wide open world when Yamcha jumped up from seat, leaving Yajirobe and Korrin during a tournament of RomRiot to chase after her. “Hey. HEY. You were out all day and now you’re going out again??”

“You’re busy with your game! I’ve got something pressing I need to take care of at work.”

“Nobody works on Saturdays on this side of town.”

“I’m a Capsule employee. We work when the boss tells us to work.”

Yamcha crossed his arms and turned his head away. “Just like you to lie to me. Feels like that’s all you ever do anymore—runoff under mysterious circumstances then lie about it. You know, I’m really beginning to wonder if you even want to be in a relationship with me.”

“What relationship?” Bulma said with her hands searching the air.

“OUR relationship! Geesh Bulma you are so selfish!! You never think about me or how I feel! Do you even care how I feel? Do you know that I’m a human being with feelings or do you just think that oh he’s out of a job he’s just a bum so I’m going to treat him any way I want! Well it’s not as easy for me to find a job as it is for you! I can’t just roll out of bed and go to some science firm somewhere and say oh hey, my last name is Briefs, give me a job!”

“Neither can I !”

“Oh come on! You act like I haven’t even tried ! I try every single day to find a job to please you and it’s never good enough, never!! Well I’m telling you right now if you walk through that door then you can forget about us!! You can forget about all the years we spent together, everything we’ve built TOGETHER! It’s not like I haven’t been there for you!”

“Never there for me.” Bulma mumbled as she opened the door.

“WHAT?!”

“You were never there for me Yamcha! Unless it was to stick out your hand and ask for money, you were never there for me!! Every past due bill, every struggle I’ve been through to find a crust of bread to bring home for dinner—”

“When have we ever gone without??”

“We don’t go without because I stay employed!! And Tien brings us scraps!! Out of the kindness of his heart, he brings us throwaways as a treat—AS A TREAT, YAMCHA!!”

“So! What’s wrong with that? Is eating perfectly good, free food too good for you? I swear you blow up at the stupidest things!”

“I get a ticket and the only reaction you have is oh well how are you going to pay for it?”

“Well I didn’t violate the light law, it’s not my responsibility.”

“I almost lose my job and you just walk off like oh well, not my problem.”

“They’re not going to fire you! You’re Ms Corporate! Not like you don’t have your nose so far up Goku’s ass you can smell what he had for dinner the night before.”

“You don’t know the first thing about my life anymore. You don’t help, you don’t care, and I don’t care if you’re here when I get back or not!”

“Fine then bitch, don’t expect me to be!!”

“I should be so lucky!” Bulma shouted back as she mounted her bike and struck her hand over the instrument panel, bolting off blindly through the dark, not much caring if she hit a body or not.

Bulma gripped the bench she was sitting on with her fingers curled under the seat, clawing it with her fingernails while her teeth ground together within her tightly clenched jaw. She alternated between checking the time on her wrist watch, the time on her phone and the time displayed on the Capsule Corp ticker, but of course the danger came in checking the phone, where messages from Yamcha would periodically present themselves. _What do you want me to do with this thing you bought me? Should I leave it?_

Bulma rolled her eyes and hung her head. 11:25. Suddenly It felt foolish and stupid to be sitting in the Capsule Corp courtyard at night, alone. It was foolish and stupid to think the bum from the diner would show, that he would in any way be a suitable “match” for Goku, just like it was foolish and stupid to hunt down “the void”, shatter that illusion, shatter the illusion of living a good life with a boyfriend who hated her guts. She combed her hands through her bright blue hair and tapped her foot. She jumped up and paced. 11:27. _He’s not coming. Why do I even want him to show up? Is this all just for Goku or . . . am I really that desperate to . . . What about Roshi and Oolong, what would happen if, What if he really does move out? What if they left? What if 18 only did all that because she felt sorry for . . . I should have brought the gun I should have brought the gun why am I out here all alone??_

As her heart raced, the distance between breaths seemed to get shorter, more shallow. She checked the time again and felt a tightness in her chest when her watch displayed 11:32. She paced to the front door and peered inside to check and check again that no security guard was in place. She tilted her phone upward and felt the tightness in her chest echo in all the little veins in her head as another text from Yamcha showed up. She locked the screen and glanced up, giving a hard startle after spying what looked like a tall human figure standing in the arching branches of the courtyard trees. It stood with its legs tightly together, feet pointed outward to either side, thick hair that seemed to flop over in a wave. She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head, and when she opened them back up again it was still standing there. Suddenly it raised its arms. It struck one leg out and thrust its head forward. Her frightened, sensitive eyes noticed the tiniest of tiny details—the bounce of an earing on a chain dangling from its ears—before the thing zipped away through the dwarf trees like a bold of black lightning. “Ok. Ok Bulma you’re officially beginning to lose it.” She whispered under her breath. She swallowed the lump in her throat, hovered her thumb over the flashlight button to her phone, thinking of Krillin and his tickets and what cops could possibly be out at this time of night, then pressed the beam of the flashlight directly onto Vegeta’s face as he turned around the corner of the marble building. “Oh! Oh my Kami I – sorry about that!” She said as he winced in the bright light, “You—you’re here! I-I’m glad! Glad you decided to give this a try.” She said, trying very hard to breath normally through the sudden shock. “Let’s go.”

Bulma turned away from the Saiyan prince and faced the front doors, morphing quickly from park scardy cat to lead product developer of Capsule Corporation, career woman, and scientist as she had done every weekday morning for as long as she had been a working adult. She badged in and lead him through the lobby to the elevator, legs still wobbly and achey from her fright in the courtyard. She pressed the number 47 once he had boarded, turning herself slightly towards him, wondering if Saiyans had some otherworldly way of sensing fear. “You can take your hood down if you want. Nobody is going to be here.”

Vegeta’s split, silver eye ticked back to it’s corner then locked up front again. He curled his fingers around the edge of his hood and pulled it back, revealing the true shape of his hair. It occurred to her that she had only ever seen him with his head covered, either by hairnet or hood or manbun, but in the bold, bright light of the elevator she could see that his hair was a rich color of black, standing straight and tall and proud on its own in thick locks that encircled his head like a crown. It made his silence all the more noble and his pain all the more apparent as his proud and stony appearance seemed weighted down by the frozen black flame. In the back of her mind, Bulma could hear the voice of the art store Namekian say _He was a prince, you know_. 

“Thanks for trusting me enough to come down here.” She said as the elevator arrived at the 47th floor. With a ding both doors smoothly departed, revealing a lab space full of dormant machines whose shiny bodies gleamed glossy and cold in the low light of the glowing Capsule Corp logo overhead. Bulma boldly stepped through, noticing Vegeta lagging behind as he cautiously scanned the interior with his hands thrust in the belly pocket of his hoodie. “All these robots are just used for assembly, they’re not the shooty stabby sentient type. Totally harmless.”

Vegeta knitted his brow and ducked his head a little lower between his shoulder blades. The woman from the bar was leading him deeper and deeper into the badlands of the office building with its cubical buttes clustering tighter and tighter together until they formed a kind of canyon. At the end of the canyon, the woman opened a door to a room with table in the center, restraints hanging all around it like spent snakes. “I think it would be wise to remove your hoodie, if that’s ok by you.” She said, pausing as Vegeta’s look turned more sour. “I’ll hang onto it for you, ok? Nothing’s going to happen to it. 

The Saiyan prince gave a snort. He looked all around himself, then, grabbing the hoodie by the bottom hem, lifted it up over his head, catching his faded and stained black tank top, revealing momentarily a smooth row of abs so well defined that they could have been the factory mold for all well-muscled men. He rolled the hoodie in his hands and Bulma felt her eyes drawn to the muscles of his chest, how hard and rounded, how they complimented his rippling arms. Suddenly he thrust his arm out to her, pressing the hoodie into her chest with a little more force than she was prepared for, snapping Bulma out of the distraction of her wandering eye and back to reality. She scowled at him and rubbed the spot on her chest where the hoodie made an impact, “A little more gently next time, please.” She said with a growl to her voice, “Get up on the table and lay down.”

Vegeta laid back on the table and peered up into the hulking machine above him. He heard the jingle of belts and quickly turned his head to see the woman attempting to encircle his left wrist. He jerked his hand away and sat up, only to find her hand pushing him back down to the table with authority, “Look, You can’t move and squirm around while this thing is running, ok? Just let me do this, UGH!”

Vegeta gave a groan. He surrendered himself to the table and allowed her to buckle the remaining restraints. He tested them subtly by squeezing his fists and flexing his calves, then relaxed again as she tightened the final belt across his chest. “Really, it’s not going to take long. I mean, this thing healed a spinal cord injury in less than 3 minutes. It’s not going to take that much longer with you.” She said, “So I’m going into the operator’s booth. You’ll be able to see me, I’ll be able to see you, this is as safe as safe can be. Worst case scenario is it won’t do for a Saiyan what it does for humans, right? “ She said as she turned her back to him and walked towards the door of the booth, “It’s not radioactive, it’s not even radio waves, it’s just harmless Blutz waves, that’s all.”

Vegeta did a double take. His hair bristled and stood on end. He raised his head slightly off the table and made a sound, but the woman from the bar was already inside the other, smaller room. The device directly above his body began to hum. He wriggled his shoulders and the belt across his chest contracted as if tightened by wench somewhere beneath the table. He curled his biceps and the wrist restraints formed an electro magnetic bond with the table that not even he in all his strength could budge. A spark formed at the tip of the device—it was radiant and iridescent, hypnotizing in its intensity. Its energy burst out it hit Vegeta in the chest, covering him in a field of white light that bubbled up then quickly sank into his skin. 

From the operator’s booth Bulma could see the energy being absorbed into his body. Before she even peered into the monitors, it seemed as though she heard thumping like a heartbeat growing strong and fast and powerful. “This is incredible. It’s not doing what it did to Roshi he’s just . . . soaking it up like a sponge.” She mumbled. She pressed the button to the intercom and placed her hands on the instrument panel, “Hey, you doing ok down there?”

Vegeta’s wrist restraints popped off. His heaving chest expanded, snapping the belt across it with such force that it flew across the room and busted the window in the operator’s booth. His eyes turned glowing red and his mouth foamed, then with a roar it widened and lengthened, bright white canines slid from his gums. Beneath his skin a black blob moved, making Rorschach-like patterns just before his shirt, pants, shoes disintegrated under the force of erupting muscles and dark, thick fur. “Oh shit!!” Bulma exclaimed before Vegeta’s full Ozaru form unfurled in the far too small room, “OH SHIT!!!!!!!!!!” She screamed as the beast punched the machine overhead, ripping it from the ceiling, caving in the walls all around the private lab, smashing the cubicals on the other side of the wall and then barreling through them.

Bulma tucked Vegeta’s hoodie under her arm and tugged and pulled the door to the operator’s booth before finally kicking it open. She ran through the gaping hole left by the giant gorilla then startled at the sight of him plucking up robots that were bolted to the floor and throwing them to the far off windows with such force that they smashed through and fell to the street. “Stop! STOP!!! I can reverse this, I—”

Ozaru Vegeta scooped up a screaming Bulma with swipe of his massive paw, tucking her whole body into his palm, leaving only her head peaking out of his fist. He slapped the remaining robots on the floor in a backhand that scattered them like toys, sending floor and ceiling tiles flying. Broken florescent lights flickered as they hung. Pipes burst and steam flooded the engineering floor. An enraged Ozaru Vegeta smashed his unoccupied fist into the neon Capsule Corp logo and sparks drizzled and popped with the same brightness as the blutz wave machine. The giant monkey galloped full force towards the picture windows that looked out over west city. He placed his head down, tucked Bulma to his chest and burst through the glass, blasting a shower of shards out with him, a tinkling rain of shattered glass falling down to the city streets below where his body was swiftly plunging until he reached his free hand out to the nearest building and swung from it as though it were a tree in the forest. 

From the moment the Ozaru burst through the window, Bulma found herself suspended in time, moving in slow motion while chaos and destruction rained down all around her. In her heightened state from 47 stories high above, she saw a man, on a cycle, mouth agape, 6 moxibustion dots on his head, wide eyes, fingerless gloves gripping the handlebars while blue and red lights circled out from their source within both wheel wells. “ K R I L L E N!!!!!” she cried out to the very limits of her lungs, and the little man turned and gave chase as Ozaru Vegeta swung from building to building. Soon a small fleet of police cars and cycles were following behind him, but always with Office Krillin up front, striving to go faster, striving to keep up. Ozaru Vegeta turned his head over his shoulder to look at the source of the noise from the street. He swung low to the ground and swiped his tail, knocking Officer Krillin into the fleet of cop cars like a bowling ball into group of pins. He quickly righted himself and yanked the bike from the wreckage, wasting no time in starting it and chasing after the monster ape, spurred on by the sound of Bulma’s earsplitting screams as they echoed through city streets with an alacrity that shocked Krillin to the core. “fine if that’s the way you want to play it!” He said. Through the force of his chi he rose to the sky, abandoning the bike, zooming like a jet past the Ozaru to the top of a high building just ahead of the giant monkey’s path. He planted both feet far apart and raised one hand up in the air, drawing all the ki in his small body to his fingers in a swirling blaze of power. D E S T R U C T O D I S C!!

The great ape turned his shoulder, turning the fist that was holding Bulma inward between himself and the building he was clinging to with the other hand. The Destructo Disc was a direct hit, spinning a line down his back that split the fur and bled. Vegeta turned his great ape face towards the little man. He jumped to the building he was standing on and thrust his drooling canines over the top. “No—please! Don’t hurt him! He’s a friend!”

“Some friend.” The ape replied, knocking Krillin on his ass in disbelief.

“You mean to tell me you can TALK?!” Bulma screeched.

“I’m an elite warrior OF COURSE I’m in control of myself!” Vegeta said. He gave out a snort that rolled over Krillin then jumped to the next building, then the next, holding a scowling, fuming Bulma to his chest.

“Where are we going?? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU TAKING ME?!” She shouted, trying desperately to wriggle her arms up over the crest of his thumb and forefinger, “I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME ANSWER ME!!!”

But Vegeta did not answer. He instead climbed to the top of the highest building in West City. He wrapped both feet around the flag pole at the apex of the building and thrust both fists in the air, zooming Bulma through the sky at such speed and at such a height that all concept of the earth and space and time blurred and crashed. She had only time to hear the sound of his deafening roar before everything EVERYTHING faded . . . to a deep and final black. 

“Mr. Goku? Sir? The cameras are shot. We have badge in records from Miss Briefs, but no security data beyond that.”

Goku stood at the very edge of the ruined 47th floor, teetering slightly in the shattered windowpane as ChiChi sank to her knees and sobbed in the broken glass. “Everything, EVERYTHING IN THE LAB IS RUINED” she wailed, slamming both fists into the shard studded carpet, “Who could hate us this much?? Who would do this? What could have possibly have . . . how did this happen????”

Goku rocked on his heels. He surveyed the fleet of police vehicles below and looked out across the horizon. “I know what it was. I can sense it. I still feel its power. It’s an old form, but it works and quite frankly . . . its got me all excited.”

“What are we going to do?? All our production, all our innovations, they’re just . . . they’re GONE!!”

“Kenny,” Goku said to the man in the suit behind them, “Call Dr. Gero. Tell him . . .” He said as thin filiments of pink began to rise from his gathering aura, “We’re ready to activate.” 


	10. In the Den - Bulma's awkening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma awakens the night after her wild ride in great ape Vegeta's hands with a mild case of vertigo and a strong case of curiosity--who made the paintings on the warehouse wall and what do they mean? Will Bulma's errand result in success or should she make a break for it while she still can?  
> \---------------------------------------
> 
> After a [completely unintended] long break, I am back to writing again. I hate that it's such a slow process, especially when I had such good story writing momentum behind me in the beginning, but like nearly everyone else on planet earth right now, my whole rhythm of life was completely upended due to Covid-19, and I guess my ability to focus and concentrate and get work done was not as strong as I thought it was, Believe it or not, I wrote out close to 30 or 40 pages in total during this lapse, but I wasn't satisfied with it, like, at all :( so I ended up writing and rewriting, writing and rewriting until I found that forward momentum again, so thanks for being patient and coming back to read :) ! you guys have left me some really super awesome comments and I am so anxious to get things moving again ! Will be posting again soon!  
> \--------------------------------------

~~-10-~~

Consciousness scattered, no longer in the brain but in the body, cells lit up like stars in the black cosmos of inner. A zooming was felt, a rush—twisted and turned, it took sharp dips downward and accelerated up into space at an exhilarating speed. Precious moments spent in a float, then the movement started again, to the left, to the right, upwards, downwards, the bottom falls out, glass shatters, everyone dies. A pressure built up behind her. Steadily it soaked through her back and into her chest. Again the bottom dropped out and Bulma could feel herself falling. She threw both arms out caught herself just before sliding gently to the floor on a small pile of newspapers dislodged from a big pile, arranged almost like a nest in the corner of a small brick room. She drew her arms in to her sides and more newspapers cascaded down around her. She passed her hand over them and fanned them out—all the same headline, all the same date, all exact duplicates of each other—GOKU CLAIMS VICTORY FOR THE EARTH with a picture of Goku the day he returned from Namek with his hands raised high in the air in the posture of the spirit bomb with ChiChi at his side, little Gohan in her arms. Some of them were wet and rotted. A musty smell like old books pervaded the room. She stood up and immediately dashed her hands to her head as the phantom sensation of soaring through the sky rushed through all the inner cells of her body. She quickly closed her eyes and felt the sensation of something falling away, and as she reached down to catch it, it was as if she were as large as the Ozaru great ape and that her movements were just as pronounced—she barely kept her balance as she lunged for the rough green blanket that fell from her legs to her feet. “What is this place?” she mouthed to herself as she brought the blanket up to her face, tracing her thumb over its stained and threadbare surface. She picked her chin up and looked all around herself and found newspapers plastered on the walls, all the same duplicates that had made up the bed, but the papers on the wall had pictures painted over them--symbols, writing, alien writing she did not recognize as either Namekian or Yardrat, each in one solid, blazing color of red. It was arranged like an art gallery with the papers plastered over the windows, which became apparent as the morning sun came streaming through behind them, activating the vivid properties of Namekian paint so that the symbols smoldered like the heart of fire. Black splotches lined the floor in varying degrees of darkness—from matte black to shiny, leading to a small window tucked away in the very edge of the room where a window no bigger than a shoebox was covered in newspapers that were painted black with some small glimmer of blue streaking through the top and the bottom. It was close to the floor, like a basement window, located directly across from the head of the newspaper bed, and as Bulma squat down to take a closer look at it, she noticed that the blue grew broad and wavy, taking on the shape of a woman’s bob haircut. She squinted, and a jawline could be faintly seen. And when the morning light finally reached the small window from beyond the top of the building across the way, the black of the canvas grew warm and dim in places to form cheeks and a chin, great blue eyes and fine lashes, the word Victory across her cheek, the barest hint of red forming the heart shaped lips and the tip of a lit cigarette held in V-shaped fingers.

Bulma pushed herself up to standing. She caught her forehead in her hand as vertigo set in again and stumbled towards the busted door frame of the room, spotting his hoodie laying at the foot of the bed, as if they had both just been rolled into the room by the great ape. She picked it up and took a step through the threshold, startling as soon as she stepped through. “Oh no.” she said as she dashed her palm to her face. 

Ozaru Vegeta sat with his back against the brick wall and his butt on the warehouse floor. He held his crossed arms a little tighter across his chest, black fur bristling all over. He ducked his slobbering face away from her and spoke with voice that boomed even though it was obvious that he was trying to keep it quiet. “Oh no. That’s an understatement.”

“Look I’m sorry, I—” she said as he turned himself slowly away from her with his foot, “I didn’t know it would have that different of an effect on . . . on a . . . “

“On a Saiyan? Why? Because you think we’re the same kind of monkey?” He snorted.

“I know you’re not human.”

“But instead of respecting our differences, you merely shot me up with a high dose of Blutz waves just to see what kind of effect it would have on a Saiyan guinea pig, is that it?”

“NO, it’s not!” She said as he turned his body away from her a little further, “I didn’t use you to satisfy my scientific curiosity, I tried healing you! You can’t be that mad at me about this! I tried, ok? You volunteered!”

“At wha--at the COST of making me a monster PERMENANTLY? Do you think I would have agreed to that??”

“I dunno—seems a little better to me than being a mute dishwasher!”

“T’CH!” Vegeta spat out, quickly turning his head to the side, “And how do you think I should live my life now, as some sort of oddity at a human zoo?? Should children throw stones at me while other Capsule Corp scientists think of new experiments to subject me to??”

“I-I don’t think it’s permanent.”

“You don’t THINK?? So you did absolutely no research on the effect of Blutz waves on a Saiyan??”

“Well there’s not exactly a whole lot of you people around!!”

Vegeta planted his fist into the ground and pushed off, hopping twice to reach the other side the room.

“Oh my Kami.” Bulma said with a roll of her eyes and she crossed her arms, tucking the hoodie under her side, “I mean, maybe it’s just a matter of waiting it out?”

“It’s been 8 hours of this and nothing has changed. The sun has risen and still I remain in this form!” He said, keeping his head turned away from her even from the relative safety of the other side of the room, “Can’t sleep in my own bed, a tongue so that I may finally taste but not a single morsel to be obtained!”

“8 hours? I’ve been out of it for 8 hours?” She said as her head began to swim again with the sensation of sailing through the black sky at 47 stories, “I . . . can get you something to eat I’m sure. What side of town are we on? Marijuku?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll just step out to Frieza’s an—”

“YOU WILL DO NO SUCH THING!” the ape said, lunging suddenly forward on his knuckles, “I’M SUPPOSED TO BE AT WORK!”

“OK, ok! So no Frieza’s! Wait, what time is it?” She said, feeling over all the pockets in her pants for her phone, which she slipped out of her backpocket. She hit the home button on the device, illuminating a screen packed with messages from Yamcha and Oolong and Goku and the West City Police, a blinking battery indicator in the top right corner indicating power at 1%. “7:00am. That’s . . . that may work for us.” She said, pressing the button on the side of the phone hard to turn it off before slipping it back into her pocket. “Do you trust me enough to leave?”

“Hmph, I should be so lucky.” He murmured, resting back on his haunches so that he could cross his arms over his chest again.

“Wow. well, let no good deed go unpunished I guess.” She said with a shake of her head and a disgusted look on her face, “I’m going to make this better, ok? One way or the other. If it doesn’t wear off then I’m sure I can come up with something to reverse it.”

“T’ch.” He uttered, caving in around his growling stomach, “Just go do whatever it is you’re wanting to do!”

“Shit shit shit. Bulma Briefs you’ve really done it now.” Bulma muttered to herself as she swiftly trotted up the litter encrusted path along the side of the warehouse where the grass bent over like parted hair and the glass bits sparkled in the burgeoning morning light. She thrust her arms into Vegeta’s stained hoodie, frowning to herself as she pulled the collar of the hoodie down past her face and the smell of stale cooking oil and sweat grazed her nose. She fluffed up her hair and joined up to the sidewalk, looking both ways up and down the street to find something, anything familiar, but on Sundays all the debauchery of the shops and the cafes were largely put away, leaving only flocks of devout Namekians traveling in packs patrolling the streets for delinquent children and non believers of the religion of their race. The Yardrat too had their congregations, and those leftover from the events on Namek were scattered between them all like stray dogs. Bulma thrust her hands into the belly pocket of Vegeta’s hoodie. She kept her human face hung low towards the street as alien eyes followed her a little longer than she was used to, staring as if they were visualizing dribbling liganoon tea all over the top of her blue hair. She pushed her bangs away from her scalp, and felt a small spark of encouragement as she recognized the thinnest edge of a small, pink vending machine peeking out of a crooked street corner, one that she and 18 had fed countless Zeni bills trying to get a pudgy Kawai lucky cat. It was not far from Piccolo’s art shop, but close to 7 blocks from Tien’s bakery. “I’d give anything for that bike right now.” She whispered to herself as she stepped up the pace, eating up the pavement with an exaggerated stride. She felt all over her pockets for capsule, hoping she had perhaps stowed away a scooter or electric skateboard for just such an emergency, but the only thing in her pockets was her dim and dying cell phone. She pressed the home button and squinted to see the faint messages on screen, having only enough juice to see Yamcha’s name before the phone completely died with 6 blocks still yet to go. 

Soon the streets were nothing but vending machines, and the flocks of Namekians and congregations of Yardrat became fewer and more far between. At 3 and a half blocks in, the only eyes watching Bulma were those triggered by her movement to play an ad tailored specifically to young adult human females with bright blue hair, imploring them to drop a Zeni or two in the slot for a chance to win, but just as their electronic catcalls became almost overwhelming, Bulma caught sight of Tien’s bright yellow storefront sitting in the cross street, square at the very end of the sidewalk she had been following. She picked up the pace once more, craning her head up, filtering out the bright, colorful machines begging for money at her side, but just as she was ready to step off towards the bakery to complete her mission, an odd feeling, something like a second sense, directed her to look over her shoulder into the storefront at the corner—it was an electronics store, all second hand, with many old fashioned tube TVs stuffed into the display window. They were playing all different channels of the morning news, and on each of them—black and white, color and fuzzy, sharp and staticky—the same scene playing in slow motion of the great ape bursting forth from the 47th floor of the Capsule Corp building with her in his hand playing on an endless loop at all different intervals with a scrolling marquee across the bottom that said **Capsule Corp Destroyed by Great Ape**

For reasons she did not entirely understand, Bulma’s heart sank. Over and over again she watched the great ape burst from the building, her eyes drawn to the small spot of blue peeking out of his forefinger and thumb, and with each iteration, her heart grew a little darker. She caught her forehead in her hand as vertigo from the night before inexplicably returned, and her stomach lurched. On screen, the men the reporter interviewed on the street fretted about the loss of jobs as a result of the monster’s actions. City workers complained of cleaning up broken glass. Again the giant ape shown, but not once did anyone mention what the ape was holding in his hand. She bit her lips together and turned away, not so much walking towards Tien’s as stomping, feeling an odd bevy of tears gathering in her lower part of her eyelids which she quickly wiped away as the shop bell to the bakery rang over her head. “Heyyyyyyyyyy Tien, how’s things?” She said, pressing the pleated cuffs of the sweatshirt into her eyes so Tien wouldn’t notice her crying.

“Bulma! What are you doing here? Thought you’d be downtown after what happened last night at Capsule Corp!”

“Oh what happened last night?” Bulma said, dashing the back of her hand to her nose to hide a sniffle.

“It’s been all over the news—a giant freaking monkey took off the top half of Capsule Corp headquarters, can you believe it?”

“A monkey, huh, strange.”

“Yeah, guess it did a lot of damage. People are saying it was either one of the “other” aliens leftover after the events on Namek, or some sort of act of corporate espionage.”

“Corporate espionage? Wow, that’s . . . that’s kind of funny.“ Bulma said as she wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Say Tien, do you happen to have a phone charger? I came all the way over to this side of town and completely forgot to take mine.”

“Sure! Take this one!” Tien said with a smile, “And if you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the back and make sure everything is shut off.”

“Sure go ahead.” She said as she connected the wire, waiting for Tien to disappear before sneaking a peek at her phone screen. Buried 5 bubbles deep in between messages from 18 and Goku and Chichi and Krillin was a message from Yamcha. She took a deep breath, her heart racing as she thought of their last interaction on the lawn, the two of them shouting at one another, the things he said, the things she said. Where she expected pleas for getting back together, or concerns about her whereabouts, as she clicked on Yamcha’s message bubble, the only message she got from him was **Babe can you tell me where the salt is? I can’t find it**. 

“You ok? You seem a little down this morning. Yamcha’s not giving you a hard time again, is he?”

“Um, you could say that.” She said with a weak smile as she laid the phone flat on the counter, “So . . . did the news say anything about anybody getting hurt or . . . missing or anything?”

Tien shook his head, “No, I mean, the whole lights out thing kind of keeps people off the streets so, you know, no one really around TO get hurt. Haven’t spoke to Krillin yet so maybe I’ll ask hi—”

“Oh yes, officer Krillin right, he was probably on patrol that night, right? Always the first to write out those tickets ha ha.” Bulma said, cutting Tien off before he could finish his thought, “Say um, did you—do you have any leftovers today? Like, I mean, maybe, a whole bunch of leftovers? I’m kind of in a situation and . . . I need lots. A-a-and I want to take them someplace, like within the Marijuku district. You don’t have to drop them off at my house. I—I kind of need them for somebody else.”

Tien briefly squinted all three of his eyes. “Well, sure, as luck would have it, I had to use up a bunch of flour to make room for new stock, so I have a ton of plain bagels, will that work?”

“Ok so when you say a ton, are we talking a literal ton or?” She timidly asked, realizing how ridiculous her question was at the raise of Tien’s eyebrow, “Alright I . . . like I said before I kind of need a lot of food.”

“I have a full 20 pan load. I was going to give them to one of the local temples, but . . . if this is for a good cause—”

“It’s not really a good cause, just my cause.” She said, “Give me half, and give the other half to the temples. Oh and uh, could I get a ride?” 


	11. Shadow of the beast - out of the blue, a possible cure!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma and Ozaru Vegeta have a talk over bagels, but who is hiding in the shadows? Can Bulma reverse the Ozaru form? 
> 
> \----------------------------
> 
> I don't know about you, but I'm pretty exhausted by all that's happening in the world right now, so let's sink into a little fantasy, shall we? :D No news, just fun, but maybe just a touch of darkness in this chapter as we get closer to some answers ;)
> 
> \-------------------------

11.

“Blech—these are as bland as Frieza’s gruel! Wasn’t there anything else you could obtain?” the Ozaru bluntly barked out as he delicately picked bagels out of the bag with the tips of his fingers as though he were eating cheerios.

“Sorry, that was the best I could do FOR. FREE.” Bulma replied, “Besides, this was a little less conspicuous than, oh, say, driving a dump truck full of veggies to an abandoned warehouse in broad daylight. And you won’t let me go to Frieza’s to get anything from him, so—”

“T’ch I don’t want anything from that bastard.” Vegeta grumbled as he pinched another bagel between his thumb and forefinger, bringing it to his nostrils and sniffing it before popping it in his mouth, “Wouldn’t piss on him if he were alight with fire.”

“Alright, alright, I get it, you don’t like him. So why work for him?”

“Need the money.” The great ape murmured with his lips puckering behind another tiny white bagel. 

“For what?” Bulma said with a slow, thoughtful shake of her head, “No offense, but if this is the place where you usually stay it’s not as though you’re putting that money towards the rent, or towards food for that matter, I mean, could you even eat without a tongue?”

“Nothing of quality. Soup and gruel, that was the extent of it.”

“And the money? Surely you weren’t working 80 hours a week to pay for soup and gruel.”

The ozaru narrowed his eyes and pulled his knees and elbows in a little closer to his body, “I needed it . . . to pay for paint.”

“Paint. You needed it for paint?”

“Namekian paint. It’s expensive.”

“Are these your paintings here on the wall?”

The great ape slowly crossed his arms. He waggled his head from side to side as if trying very hard to avert her steady gaze before answering, “Yes.”

“You could have used paint from a big box store. Seriously spray paint is like 1.99 a can.”

“Don’t be so vulgar. Common paint would not have suited my purpose.”

“Well, what is it? What do these paintings mean? It must be pretty important to you to be spending all that money on Namekian paint just to paint a pretty picture of, well, whatever that is.”

“Pretty pic—THAT,” he said, pointing towards the largest canvas on the wall, “Is the royal insignia of the Vegeta clan!”

“Ok, so a family crest, cool, what about the others?”

“Words in Saiyan language. Nothing of interest to you.”

“So like, slogans? Inspirational stuff? Is it ‘Live laugh love’ in your language?”

“what?! NO!! it’s . . . just . . . reminders, that’s all!”

“Wake up at 6? Don’t forget to get milk? What is it?”

Vegeta gave a groan, “Strength above all. That’s the one on the left.”

“Ok, and the one on the right?” She said as Vegeta gave a groan so deep that it seemed to make the bricks shake, “Oh come on, stop being such a big baby about this. If it was important enough to you to make it then you could at least explain it!”

“It’s not easily translatable. Something along the lines of ‘Remember your pride’, not something a human could fully understand.”

“So . . . ‘live laugh love’ for Saiyans. Got it.” She said with a knowing smile, “And . . . the one in black?”

Vegeta suddenly sat up on his knuckles. He swung out his arms and planted his hands in front of the small brick room containing the newspaper bed, positioning his body between it and Bulma like a kid hiding something from a parent, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There is a painting in that room that is QUITE a bit more elaborate than the others and it seems to resemble—" 

“Nothing in that room is of your concern.”

“Well if you didn’t want me to see it, why did you place me in there last night? I certainly didn’t walk to that . . . that bed, if that’s what you want to call it. I mean, I saw it, it’s not like you can deny it’s sitting in there.” She said as the giant gorilla very obviously began to pout, “Seriously?? I’ve never met an artist this self-conscious of his work.”

“Oh please, don’t insult me with such an inference. I’m not an artist.”

“Then what do you call that?? This?? All of this?” Bulma said, throwing her arms out with her palms up.

“It’s not meant for human titiliation.”

“Then why do it??”

“To remind him of who he is . . . before the void takes it all, isn’t that right Vegeta?” Frieza cooly purred as he emerged from the shadows of the room, “Hmm so this is what’s going on with my asset. Honestly monkey, what did you think was going to happen?” Frieza said, crossing his arms as he leaned back in a stand-offish posture, “You tried to skirt the rules, and now look at you.”

“Oh You would never miss a chance to say I told you so, would you?” Vegeta replied as he sunk a little lower into the floor.

“How long?” Frieza asked Bulma.

“How long what?”

“How long has he been like this? Since last night I assume?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“It’s been all over the news you know . . . I must say if I have to see footage of this big monkey bursting from the skyscraper windows in shakey cam one more time I’ll throw myself into the fryer!! You’ve really got yourself into a mess this time.”

Bulma took a deep breath and braced her arms around her stomach, “Ok so listen—I get it, ok? I screwed up. I didn’t realize Saiyans were sensitive to blutz waves and, well, I gave him like a super heavy dose and—”

“How heavy?”

“like 500 rad.”

Frieza blinked his eyes and gave his head a slight shake. He glanced at Vegeta and said with a pronounced, wicked smile, “. . . So what zoo would you prefer, the one on the north side or that dump run by the guy with the bleach blonde mullet?”

Vegeta gave a groan. “Ok, no,” Bulma said, interjecting herself between the two, “There’s no way this is a permanent thing. Someone exposed to radiation may have radiation sickness for a few days, at worst they may have traces of radioactivity for a few months, but these are Blutz waves! That’s no more dangerous than Radio waves or the radiation given off by a microwave. I mean, even sunlight is technically more dangerous to be exposed to than Blutz waves!”

“True for humans, not true for Saiyans—why do you keep thinking things are the same between you? Just because you’re both simians? As emperor I used to drop these fine specimens on planets and let them crush, kill and destroy whatever civilization was inconvenient for me—worked like a champ! I nary had to lift a finger to subdue solar systems full of inhabited planets as long as they had at least a few moons capable of producing blutz waves. If you dropped a human on some of the planets we’ve been on, you’d probably be eaten!”

“So what did you do to de-escalate them? When you took them to conquer other planets, what did you do to revert them from this form?”

“Nothing. We did nothing! We waited until the sun came up the next day, then collected their spent, naked bodies and threw them back in the brig in case they woke up punchy. But now sunset has come and gone and look at him, still Ozaru. Must have been quite the high grade beam you shot him with, although . . . . “

“Although what?” Bulma said as the short white and purple alien and great ape exchanged looks, “Don’t hold out on me Frieza, what’s your ‘although’?”

Frieza’s heavily lined eyes narrowed. His wicked smile renewed slightly, his eyebrow arched, and as if the two of them exchanged thoughts, the great Ozaru gave a sigh and a groan. “It’s entirely possible . . . that the dark matter inside of him may be complicating things a bit. Didn’t I tell you, monkey? Didn’t I warn you that any attempts to heal might break the covenant?”

“The covenant of what?” Bulma said as Vegeta’s sulking visibly deepened, “Goddamnit guys stop holding out on me!!” she shouted, stomping her foot angrily before turning to Vegeta, “You spent the whole morning berating me about not being able to fix this and now HE’S saying something about dark matter??” She said, turning from Vegeta to Frieza, “and YOU! You knew what we were going to attempt! YOU could have spoke up! YOU could have said something! So neither one of you need to treat me like I’m some sort of evil mad scientist!!”

“How was I supposed to know you would blast him with werewolf aura ???”

“YOU HAD MORE EXPERIENCE WITH SAIYANS!!”

“T’ch this is hell. I’m in hell! Yemma’s people!!” Vegeta growled, throwing his paws up towards the ceiling, “The covenant is the burden I accepted to harbor the power of the void within my body. It’s the matter of space, greater than the Kai, greater than time itself. Planets fall, gods fall, time bends the knee to nothing and no one, but the void . . . the void remains, even after all time has gone.” Vegeta replied, his fur bristling as a heavy silence set in between them, “I should have been dead. They gave me a choice—become a vessel for it, or spend eternity in anguish, afflicted by a never-ending cycle of my own thoughts, my own lusts, a burning, tortuous lust for revenge and no way to fulfill it. Any Saiyan of pure blood would have done it, but not every Saiyan could. I paid a heavy price. A hell uniquely my own." 

“Surely blutz waves could not have rid you of it, that would be like plucking a feather from a tiny chick, dropping it in a titanium bowl and expecting to break.” Frieza said, “Tell me Vegeta, has the void presented itself at all since taking this form?”

But Vegeta did not answer. 

“You have dark matter within your body?” Bulma said her eyes growing wide, “I saw something . . . as you were being treated with the blutz waves . . . it moved beneath the surface of your skin. Was it . . . was that it? Oh my Kami . . . my Kami that explains so much—you took on the great ape form because your Saiyan body was exposed to blutz waves, but you can’t shed the radiation naturally because the underlying dark matter doesn’t respond to radiation of any sort, so it’s almost like you’ve trapped it in a mini-universe!” She said, “Proving dark matter exists that . . . that would be a massive scientific discovery in and of itself! Physicists have been trying to prove the existence of dark matter for years and here it is, trapped inside of you, like lightning in a bottle!”

“It’s not what you think it is. Neither one of you could understand.” Vegeta said, cocking an eyebrow as he glanced from Bulma to Frieza, “Just like neither one of you seem to understand the urgency of me getting out of this form!! We can talk scientific discovery and amazement all day long but if I’m stuck in this form it makes no difference whether the void is present or not!! Kakarot will continue to grow more powerful and break limit after limit until no universe, no dimension will be safe!”

“Kakarot? What’s a kakarot?” Bulma said as both Vegeta and Frieza turned away, “Fine. Whatever. Just . . . Is this whole giant monkey thing universal to all Saiyans?”

“It is . . . but Vegeta is special because only those of his bloodline have control over it.” Frieza replied, “Each planet I ever sent a Saiyan to, I sent one—ONE to conquer the whole planet. Most of them didn’t even need to take on this form to do it either. Once the moon arose and the blutz waves poured out, the change would take place, it was all over for whatever hapless civilization they landed on. They were beyond reason, mindless destruction machines. They certainly didn’t have the ability to speak or control themselves in any way, but those of the royal bloodline, ah, they were different.” Frieza said with a slight smile, “Overall, the Saiyans were a dangerous, powerful people. Believe me when I say, the universe breathed a sigh of relief when they were wiped out. Imagine the misery of planets with multiple moons.”

“Ok but what made them different? What gave them control? Vegeta, was there anything in your family lore—legends, mythology, books, TV shows—anything that would point to a reason why the royal family should have control over this form, but not others?” She said as the great ape waggled his head around and scratched it, “C’mon Vegeta think about this.”

Vegeta shifted around in his seat. His lips parted, his eyes searched the floor, his lips opened several times but no sound came out until he finally forced himself to say, “My family was the only one permitted to wear the color blue.”

“Blue . . . “

“Please this is hardly the time for a fashion crisis” Frieza said with a chortle.

Bulma stuck a finger in the air as she searched the empty space with her eyes, “No wait . . . he may be on to something with this . . . blue . . . Prussian blue. We use Prussian blue here on Earth to soak up extra radiation in the body whenever—OF COURSE! I know how to undo this!”

Frieza and Vegeta exchanged glances. 

“I know how to undo this, but it’s going to be tricky. We have to go back to Capsule Corp. Tonight.”

“Oh sure. Let me just throw on my hoodie, I’m sure no one will know that I’m actually a great ape.”

“We’ll go in the middle of the night. Early morning. It’s Sunday, lights out, no one will be awake.” She said, “C’mon Vegeta we gotta take this chance!”

“Hmm-yes well, we all saw what happened last time we took a chance on one of your harebrained ideas,” Frieza said, “Whatever it is you can do, do it quick. I want my kitchen monkey back pronto!!”


	12. The Ghosts of Arlia - doomed vessel of the Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frieza bestows a small donation as Bulma and Vegeta prepare for a midnight run to Capsule Corp but makes it clear the donation is not out of charity - is Bulma helping the right people, or unwittingly assisting an evil like the Earth has never seen?  
> \----------------------------------------------  
> Hey guys :) Happy Independence day weekend! I really hate that this is taking me so long to get out there to you but this whole working from home/quarantine business just has me mentally in a very bad place :( I never realized how much having a commute every day gave me that "thinking time" I needed to really envision and solidify what I want to write, and I also never realized how much brainspace my work occupies between the hours of 8 to 5 :/ My non-fanfiction book was edited and finished 5 months ago and I still can't bring myself to query or self publish! But at least I have a job, and at least I still can make incremental progress, just gotta get used to the new normal I guess! anyways i hope you enjoy this passage - let me know what you think :)   
> \---------------------------

12.

“Don’t tell him it came from me. Just take it. And make sure he brings along the artifact—he’ll know what it is I’m referring to.” Frieza said, handing Bulma several plastic grocery bags full of produce, both earth and alien. 

“Thanks Frieza. I won’t say anything.” Bulma said as the phone in her back pocket began to ring.

Frieza narrowed his eyes as Bulma quickly slipped the phone from her back pocket and silenced it, stuffing it into her pocket again with the grocery bags crashing awkwardly into each other as they ran down her arms. “What time are you planning your little errand to Capsule Corp?”

“2am. Dead of night. Nobody’s going to be ar—damnit.” She said, rolling her head around on neck before letting it hang as the phone began to ring again.

“Well, aren’t you going to answer it?” Frieza said in a low, catty voice.

Bulma gave her head an almost imperceptible shake, “No I’m . . . I’m kind of content to just let it slide.”

“If you don’t want to be found, then why keep your phone on at all? Surely I don’t have to explain digital tracking to Capsule Corp’s premier scientist and engineer.”

“No, no—you’re right. I should just turn it off.” Bulma said as she wedged her hand between the bags hanging from her arm to reach for her phone. As her fingers grazed the slick screen the broad arc of cabbage from inside one of the bags bumped it out of her grasp, knocking the phone to the floor with a loud face-first slap. She squatted down to pick it up, bags surrounding and suffocating all hint of the Capsule-branded electronic. She swirled her hand within the loosened grocery bag handles, feeling along the smooth surface of the floor until she found the phone again. She squeezed the button on the side of the phone to brighten the screen to make sure it wasn’t cracked, but soon found herself swiftly searching through the cascade of messages that were growing more and more narrow with the pile of unread notifications. She tapped the thin banner that bore his name, then locked the home screen again as some little bit of her heart crumbled like plaster. 

“You humans are so charmingly obvious with your emotions.” Frieza said, coyly laying his chin on the backs of his hands as he brought his elbows under them on the restaurant bar. “is this the same one who motivated you to come here in the first place? I seem to recall you sneaking out on a lover somehow.”

“Um, kind of. It’s complicated.”

“Is it any less complicated than sneaking food out to a giant gorilla? Your loyalties are odd.” Frieza said with an exaggerated vocal fry to his sultry voice, “Is this your way of getting revenge on whoever this is who keeps breaking your heart?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Ok yes, but . . . I need to help Vegeta, you know, it’s kind of my fault that he’s this way to begin with. I don’t want to leave this undone.”

“Hmmm well, he’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. In fact, it’s probably somewhat of a relief for him to be in this form, but he’d never tell you that. Anyway . . . tell him no need for thanks – it’s coming out of his paycheck. And it will soon come out of yours if you don’t set things straight. Get him out of that form Bulma Briefs. I want my kitchen monkey back!!”

Bulma looked over both shoulders twice before approaching the path behind the warehouse. She looked up towards the rooftops and took a good hard look at the people out on the nearest nighttime street, her ears picking up on an odd sound as she nervously monitored distant diners raising teacups and digging through paper wrappers for street food—a series of grunts and growls, noises of frustration, subtle but sure. Despite the ache in her arms from the weight of the bags, she quickly trotted around the corner as if fleeing from an unseen enemy. She nudged open the rusted white door to the brick building with her foot. Against the far wall Ozaru Vegeta sat propped with his shoulder on the wall one leg bent and the other stretched along the floor with a long, black slingshot-looking thing wrapped around his curled foot with straps stretching up to his free hand, grunting and growling and gnashing his teeth before giving an exasperated sigh, “It is nearly the hour of midnight. I thought you had departed.” 

“OK, what the hell are you doing?” Bulma said as she entered the greater interior of the warehouse, unloading the food from Frieza’s restraurant onto the floor.

“Putting . . . . on . . . . my . . . . armor T’CH BLAST IT ALL!!” he said as the fabric slipped from his hand and snapped him in the face.

“Why?! What do you even need it for??”

“I’m NAKED.”

“What does it matter?! YOU’RE COVERED IN FUR!”

“You’re covered in skin yet you are still clothed!”

“Well how do you expect something that was made for a normal sized humanioid to fit you?” She said as she snatched the uniform up off the floor and held it out in front of her.

“IT STRETCHES!” he said, swiping it from her, carefully curling his fingernail into the neck of the uniform, peering into it studiously like an old woman threading a needle. He fit both index fingers into the fabric up to the last knuckle and carefully pulled it to either side, stretching it until it spanned the length of his shoulders before working the rest of his fingers in. When it was wide enough, he pointed his toes and stuffed them inside the fabric both feet at a time, and pulled and grunted and wallowed and wrestled around on the newspaper-strewn floor. Small bits of debris rained from the ceiling from the force of his movements. She ducked a hubcab sized piece of plaster and quickly turned her scowling face up to him. He ceased his movements just long enough for the fabric to slowly work its way up his legs and hips. He gave a slightly defeated sigh and stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his bodysuit, and motioned with one sheepishly pointed finger, “My gloves. I need them.”

“Why do you need gloves? What are gloves going to do for a 100ft tall gorilla?”

“Never mind that. I just . . . I don’t like touching earthly things, that’s all.” Vegeta spat out as he pinched the opening to his black gloves with the very tips of his fingers and tried stretching them out.

“Haven’t you been here long enough to get over any heebeejeebees you might have had over the germs earth carries?” She said, holding her hand out before her palm up, beckoning him to drop the gloves into her hand. “If it really means that much to you then just give them to me and I’ll try to help.”

Vegeta dropped the gloves into Bulma’s hand. They were oddly soft and light, a fine fabric that was obviously stained with black as the insides were a dingy white. She hooked the lip of one around a piece of rebar and walked away to the other side of the room, stretching it until the great ape could work his hand inside, repeating with the other glove. “Happy?” She said, “Now where is this artifact thing?”

“In that chamber.” He said to Bulma’s back as she quickly disappeared into the room, “What do you want with it? What business is it of yours?”

“Ugh why are you being so grouchy with me? GAWD!” She said as she came back with the artifact in hand, “Frieza said you had to wear it so just bend down and let me pin it to you, if I can figure out this clasp.” Bulma said as she turned the polished silver artifact over in her hand, “It feels weird – like somehow light and heavy at the same time. What kind of artifact is it?”

Ozaru Vegeta grunted and groaned, struggling to lower his head and shoulders to the floor, “The Cloak of King Moai – it’s just . . . something . . . the void can use to expand upo—T’CH IF I BUMP THIS CEILING THE WHOLE BLASTED THING WILL FALL DOWN!! JUST—just climb up!” He said as he sat up with his back to the wall.

Bulma shrugged her shoulders and grabbed a handful of fur, kicking and pulling her way up hand over fist with Vegeta wincing and growling and gnashing his teeth all the way up. “What is this place anyways? A factory? Some sort of recycling plant?”

“A manufacturer of disposable media. I believe it was commonly called a printing press.”

“That explains a thing or two.” Bulma muttered as she struggled to pull herself up, “Little help here maybe?”

Ozaru Vegeta gave an impatient sigh. He gently curled his fingers beneath her feet so she could use them as a platform to move progressively up, “So . . . I guess . . . the presses stopped . . .the day he came back from Namek? Come to think of it,” She said, taking a seat on his shoulder, “I haven’t seen a single print magazine or newspaper since that time.”

“Humans are generally non observant. Doesn’t surprise me that you wouldn’t notice.” Vegeta muttered.

“So how is this thing a cloak?” She said as she resumed her struggle with the clasp. “I mean, it’s just a chunk of metal.”

“I don’t know how it works, I only know that it works when I need it to. Press the third leaf on the left and the fourth on the right down and towards each other. The mechanism then will become easy to understand.”

Bulma followed Vegeta’s direction and gave a little gasp when the artifact sprung open, revealing an odd vein of energy inside that swirled vigorously in tendrils of alternating purple and green. “Wow, so it’s not just some piece of jewelry.”

“No. It has been imbued with some form of . . . Yardrat witchcraft.” The Ozaru grumbled as he crossed his arms, “That was part of their end of the bargain.”

“And paint was the Namekian end of the bargain?”

“Begrudgingly so, but yes. It’s against their beliefs to produce such a color. I use it to camouflage my Saiyan armor,” He quickly rattled off, preemptively answering her inevitable question, “My armor is one of the few things in this universe that I trust, and I suppose it was their sense of mercy that permitted me such a . . . creature comfort.”

“The guy at the art store mentioned black paint was taboo.” 

“You followed me that night, didn’t you?”

Bulma felt her blood freeze in her veins. “I-I-I just happened to see you out and about and I . . . I was curious, that’s all.”

The Ozaru’s red eyes narrowed. A low, disapproving growl rumbled in his thick throat. “Marijuku . . . is not a place for a human to casually stroll at night. As should have been evidenced by your encounter with Recoome.”

“Oh . . . so . . . that was you.” Bulma said, feigning surprise.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. He was high on my hit list. I only spared you from death because I didn’t want to be implicated in it, nothing more.” 

“Oh, then, that’s a relief!” She said, swallowing the lump in her throat, “So this thing, this artifact thing, it’s a Yardrat thing?”

“You ask too many questions. Can’t you just pin it to me without knowing every little thing about it?”

“I’m a scientist. It’s my nature to be curious, ask questions, follow strange aliens in the middle of the night as they mysteriously exit the art store. If you want me to help you then you better get used to a whole helluvalot more questions.” 

“T’ch!” The Ozaru uttered, his coarse hair standing slightly on end as a disgusted bristle rippled over the furry surface of his body, “The thing that you hold . . . is the last remnant of culture that is no more. It is no more, because I destroyed it.”

“Destroyed it? you mean, like, a tribe? A village? A town maybe?”

“I mean . . . The planet.”

Bulma quickly closed her mouth to keep from gasping. She turned the artifact slowly in her hand to watch the energy inside flow, then bent forward to clip it to his chest, her heart thumping loudly in the heavy silent moment between them. 

“It seemed like such an insignificant place. Arlia was meant to be a pleasant diversion, an easy target, low hanging fruit so to speak. Our intent was to conquer it so that it could be sold but its inhabitants were a self destructive, primitive people who had already destroyed the very planet they had evolved upon. Their cities were crumbling, their natural resources spent, squandered on petty, tribal wars that turned their forests and their oceans to nothing more than empty dust. There was a sense of disappointment between my lieutenant Nappa and I when we opened our space pods after landing on the planet’s surface, but before we could cut our losses and leave, not waste our time or energy on such a place, we were quickly closed in upon by roving red-eyed Arlians, guards of King Moai. It was amusing to us that they were still so loyal to one who had turned their once thriving civilization into scrap, even more amusing that they believed we could be shackled and kept in line with swords and puny blasts of energy and threats of being imprisoned. We stood before this miserable King, suppressed our laughter when we brought his so-called champions against us, but Nappa grew impatient patronizing these overgrown crickets and vaporized their tiny army with a blast from his upraised finger.”

“And their king?”

“It was I who dispatched him, and the rightful king Atla lauded me a hero, freeing his people from centuries of oppression.” Vegeta replied, shifting around subtly in his seat, “I plucked the antenna from King Moai’s lifeless head. I called to my space pod and we were soon departed, but . . . in my mind, the planet like a crippled pet, ill with no hope of recovery, so . . . . I fired a planet buster, and Arlia and its moons were no more. Every book, every building, every babe, every single last bit of it except for the trophy I hid in my armor was destroyed. Little did I know . . . after the events on Namek . . . it would become a shackle, one even powerful enough to control a Saiyan.” He said, “They each performed their voodoo on it. They made it known I was only alive to suit their agenda. Namekians, Yardrat, the few stray Arlians who have long since passed and would never see the greener pastures of Earth. We’re not good people, Frieza and I. You feared for your life with Recoome—you should fear for the life of everyone and everything you’ve ever held dear with me. Once you’re done getting me out of this form, you would do well to leave Frieza and I alone.”

“Frieza?” She said with a soft chortle, “He may be catty but he doesn’t seem like the dangerous type. What is it that Frieza did that was so bad?”

“T’ch no one has time enough to hear all that.” Vegeta said.

“He said he was some sort of emperor, was he your emperor?”

“Vulgar earth woman.” Vegeta replied with a hiss, “You DON’T know who you’re dealing with. If it were only he alone you’d be in worser danger. Do what you must tonight but after this, no more. Stay on the human side of the city.”

“Very well, if you insist. I go back to my life and you go back to--?”

Vegeta cocked an eyebrow.

“Well??”

“Fulfilling my purpose. That is all.”

“Your purpose of being a dishwasher working through someone else’s hit list? And how many more hits do you have to go?”

“A few.”

“And you’re just tracking them down in your spare time between being Frieza’s indentured servant and painting?”

“I’m in no hurry.”

“And what about Earth? Is Earth on the hit list too just like these Moalians or Arlians or whatever you call it?”

“T’ch don’t be ridiculous of course it is not. It was agreed that I would hunt down those involved with the events on Namek and then . . . then I return to nothingness.” He said, bringing his massive hand up to reposition her to the scruff of his neck. “Once the void fulfills its purpose, I shall be no more.”

Bulma furrowed her brow. She dug her arms into the deep folds of his neck as he sat upright on his knuckles, lumbering slowly around on all fours. “You mean . . . you’re gonna die?”

The great ape paused. “No,” he said, resuming his forward crawl, “The thing I face is more final than that.”

“More final than death?” Bulma retorted with a heavy dose of doubt showing in her voice, “What could be more final than death?”

“Oblivion.” Vegeta answered, “Do you really think they would let me, the scourge of their people, re-enter the cycle of life and death? After all the things I’ve done, the pain I have inflicted, the cultures I’ve erased, the children I have slaughtered . . . Think about it. I am the perfect mule for their revenge. Disposable. Powerful. And having no people of my own, there is no home to which I long to return. When my duty has been fulfilled, I shall be as a soul erased. No spirit. No hell. No afterlife, just nothingness, as though I never existed. I once possessed the light and now . . . now I am a vessel for the dark, and when all the covenant’s purpose has found itself fulfilled, inward the darkness shall turn until all that once was me is no more.” 

Bulma felt a shiver roll over her body. She closed her eyes and shook her head as images of falling through starless space in her dream from the night before came to mind. “And the artifact, will you be able to use it tonight if you need it? In this form?” Bulma said as she leaned a little deeper into her embrace of Vegeta’s warm fur, wincing as he peeked his head above the roof, dousing them both in the cold air of night, “Will it protect you?”

“T’ch, protect. I’m an elite warrior, I’m not someone to be coddled and protected. Protection wasn’t the intent. The hour grows late. It’s time we’re off!” 


	13. Little Blue Pills - Bulma's return to Capsule Corp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma and Vegeta return to Capsule Corp to retrieve the Prussian Blue, but is someone guarding Capsule's remaining assets ?
> 
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> 
> It's been 95 degrees every day this week and I am OVER this heat!! Wanna stay inside and read with me :D ? Promise I'll make it worth your time ;) !
> 
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13.

“STAY ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF EACH BUILDING.” Bulma shouted into the Ape’s ear, “LESS OF A CHANCE OF PICKING UP AMBIENT LIGHT.”

“I’ve spent the last 3 years of my life in the shadows, don’t you think I know how to stay hidden?” Vegeta grumbled as he reached his long, hairy arm out to the next skyscraper.

“JUST SAYING!” She shouted, making the mistake of briefly looking down into the street below. She quickly squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face into his coarse and bristly fur as the sensation of falling rushed into her ribcage and flourished through her limbs. She brought her tattered shoes a little flatter against his shoulder, her knees knocking as his arm rotated in its socket, her feet acutely feeling the absence of any safety net, the swiftness of a body through air to the ground. She squeezed great clumps of his hair in each hand and gritted her teeth, but as he jumped building to building with a surprising kind of grace and agility, Bulma felt herself relax somehow, oddly comforted by his confidence, finding her body move in time with his as though he were her animal extension. “CAPSULE CORP BUILDING IS THE THIRD ONE UP”

“What?”

“THREE – THAT WAY!” she said, jutting her arm straight ahead, “THERE’S GOING TO BE ALARMS SO DON’T LAND ON IT, GET BEHIND IT!”

“T’ch of all the nonsense.” Vegeta grumbled as he shuffled side to side over the south face of an insurance building, “Do you know where this substance is within the building?”

“MEDICAL. THEY OCCUPY THE FLOORS BELOW ENGINEERING SO IT SHOULD BE EASY. NEXT ONE UP!”

Vegeta hopped to the dark corner of a massive bank building. He shimmied all knuckles and knees until he reached the other edge, taking a sheepish peek around the corner for any lights, any movement, any sign of life before jumping to the building the next block up. 

“OK NOW, GRAB ME AND REACH OUT TO THE OPEN SPOT IN THE CAPSULE CORP BUILDING,” She said, barely believing the words that were coming out of her own mouth, “STAY BEHIND THE BANK! I’LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN I’M DONE, OK?”

Vegeta reached his hand up to his shoulder and gently picked Bulma up by pinching the back of her shirt, bringing her close to his narrowed red eyes, “and how exactly do you plan on letting me know?”

“I JUST WILL, OK? AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO PICK ME UP LIKE A USED TISSUE!” she said, crossing her arms, returning an equally dirty look as he gingerly moved her inside the dark, ragged, ape-sized hole in the Capsule Corp building. She thrust her legs downward, crushing a thin lamina of shattered green glass as he let go and her body weight once again returned to her feet. She straightened her clothes and looked all around the wrecked engineering room—the broken Capsule Corp logo overhead, the desks strewn to one side of the room, the lights of the elevator buttons flickering dim and dull as though lit by the wick of a dying candle. She tilted her head upwards and gazed into the open layers of concrete and steel beams, upper floors open like an alien husk, the whole precariously balanced structure overhead black and empty and lifeless. She moved deeper into the building, feeling her heart pulse through her neck as she passed by the things that had been so familiar to her everyday life for so long damaged and upset, scarred and dirtied by thick granules of silt knocked loose from the ceiling overhead. The air smelled odd and fresh in a place where she was used to breathing canned air in. She looked over her shoulder, taking one last look at the open hole behind her before pushing open the door to the stairwell. She reached for the phone in her back pocket and turned on the flashlight, distracted momentarily by the sheer number of messages on her screen before turning her attention to the concrete littered steps. She took a step down and immediately slipped, catching herself on the railing as an avalanche of small rocks tumbled down to the next landing. She paused for a moment to catch her breath while her heart flopped painfully around her in chest, then moved downward, pressing the pads of her feet down securely before each step. 

Below engineering, the floor for the medical unit sat largely unscathed. The glass on the far side of the room was cracked but intact, and all the desks, computers and workstations were exactly where they were supposed to be. Bulma flashed the light of the phone all around the room. She hesitantly moved down the main aisle, sweeping her light side to side, keeping a careful eye into the empty clusters of cubicles for any sign of a camera or security guard. She flinched slightly when the light touched upon an empty office chair, the back staring at her like a face, a silent witness to Bulma’s crime as she moved towards the pharmaceutical cage. “Ok Bulma, we don’t know jack about medical, but we do know that Prussian blue is a type of potassium,” Bulma murmured to herself as she held her phone to the bars of the cage and scanned the light inside. “Just so many white bottles,” She said as she balanced on her tip toes and then squatted down low, maneuvering herself to quickly read through the labels on the first rack of pills. “They’re all arranged alphabetically. That would mean the potassium would be . . . . rats.” She whispered as she peered into the racks beyond. She looked below her chin to the instrument panel guarding the cage door and felt her heart sink a little lower. She raised her thin, tubular fingers to the face of it and felt around the edge for a seam. She dug her fingernails in and popped the face of the device off, revealing three small green boards dotted over with diodes and wires and blinking lights inside. She quickly pulled ribbons and rerouted delicate wires until the deadbolts at the top, bottom and middle shot back into the frame of the cage gate. She started down the rows, stumbling over herself as the sound of glass breaking echoed throughout the floor. She quickly shined the light from her phone in the sound’s direction, feeling her adrenaline morph from alarm to anger as she observed a giant ape finger poking through one of the great picture windows overlooking the city. “Woman have you found it yet?” Vegeta whispered with his lips drawn in tight to the window like someone whispering a secret into another’s ear. 

“Almost! Just hang tight!” She said as she proceeded down the aisles inside the cage once more.

“I tire of ‘hanging’. I thought you would have had this by now!” he hissed, straining to keep his booming voice low. 

“This pill is not just something sitting around in the break room first aid kit!” Bulma called out as she neared the aisle labeled with a P. She squared the light of her phone up flat against the face of the shelf and scanned through PA and PE before finally finding PO. “Potassium ferric hexacyanoferrate, Prussian blue. Administration route: Oral. This is it! I found it!” She said, taking a small bottle from the shelf. She looked back over her shoulder again to the red eye peering into the solar tint of the intact picture windows, and reached instead for the industrial sized bottle. As she moved the bottle, she saw the glint of an eye, wide and smooth, light in color, flash in the misdirected light. She gasped and stumbled backwards, shoulders hitting the shelf of pills behind her. She fumbled her phone and let it slip to the floor, and as she quickly ducked down to retrieve it, as she just as quickly snatched it up and pointed it towards the phantom eyes, her breath caught and the pills jangled noisily as she squeezed the extra-large bottle against her body with her elbow. The gap where the bottle used to be remained empty. With slow, sure movement, Bulma scanned the shelf horizontally left to right with the extra bright light from the phone. At the inside edge, the straight beige shelf formed a crooked line, her fright- informed eyes making out what looked like a jaw, then an ear, then two blue, almost white eyes with two perfect spheres of black in the center. “Eight—eighteen? Wh-why are you ? 18 is that you? Are you ok?” 

The eyes narrowed and relaxed slightly. “Goku said you’d be back,” and from the edge of the aisle stepped a young man with long black hair who looked striking like a darker version of 18, “of course, it was my theory that you’d be returning for a radiation remedy.” He said, raising the smart watch on this wrist up to face, “Tell the West City Police he’s here, south side.” He said, his sharp white-blue eyes glimmering in the LED light, “We’re going to need quite the cage to capture a Saiyan great ape.”

Bulma turned and bolted away, sprinting down the length of the pharmaceutical cage, bursting through the door just as the boy materialized in the gate of the cage to block her in. She jumped over desks and chairs, expertly twisting and turning through the maze of cubicles as the boy robotically charged through every obstacle at frightening speed. She screamed Vegeta’s name and the great ape hand came bursting through the remaining picture windows, forcing Bulma to the floor where she was scooped up along with shards of glass, several chairs and the barrel-like bottle of pills hugged against her chest. He pulled his hand outside, moved his fingers around to drop the chairs and the glass, leaving her gently pinched within his thumb and forefinger so that her legs and feet were momentarily dangling forty six stories above the city street, but as soon as he opened his hand, Bulma fearlessly pulled herself hand over fist up to his shoulder, her teeth tightly clenching the plastic lid of the heavy jar of Prussian Blue pills. “HE CALLED THE POLICE!” she shouted into his ear as she reached the top, “WE HAVE TO GO!”

“Look to the street below us – do you think I haven’t noticed?!” He said.

Bulma peered downward. Below, the streets were lit flooded with hazard lights and police lightbars and burning red flares, a cavern of red and blue flickering like magma in the city canyons surrounding Capsule Corp. She buried herself a little tighter into the great ape’s sloped shoulder, pushing herself into his neck with her tattered red chucks. “THERE WAS SOMEONE ELSE IN THERE. SOME GUY. SUPER FAST AND SUPER STRONG. SWING BACK TO THE BANK BUILDING. GET AS FAR AWAY FROM HERE AS POSSIBLE!”

Vegeta curled his feet around the corner of the Capsule Corp building, missiles from the tanks below hitting his short, curled legs before his powerful arms could pull them both to the bank building. “Insignificant flies!” He said, his fur bristling as he gave his legs a subtle shake all over. He reached his long arms over the face of the bank building and pulled himself from one end to the other over the broad side. He clung to the edge and was reaching his hand out to the next building when, as if by instant transmission, the boy with the icy blue eyes and black hair suddenly appeared in the sky just before Vegeta’s left eye. “ah-ah, dirty animal hands don’t belong on glass.” He said, holding up his palm flat before letting loose a flash that blasted through Vegeta’s eye.

Vegeta let loose a roar that made the whole bank building tremble as he recoiled. “You BASTARD!” he shouted, letting lose a wild swing in the boy’s direction that hit the bank building like a wrecking ball. “Your dirty tricks won’t spare you! Even with only one good eye I will find you and rip you limb from limb!” He said, swatting blindly to his side, backhanding the building closest to the bank and caving in its broad face. 

“Temper temper. It’s unlikely even a giant monkey like you could dismantle one of Dr. Gero’s creations.” The boy said, materializing close to the shoulder where Bulma was sitting. With lightening speed he swooped down and plucked her up, dragging her deep into the open wound in the building, but Vegeta too was quick and accurate. He followed with his fist, burrowing through concrete layers like punching through cardboard, grasping the boy by the waist with his knuckles.

Bulma dropped to the floor with the bottle of pills. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the edge of the open hole in the building as Vegeta and the boy exchanged blows in a vicious, strangely even fight for two beings so differently sized as the police in the street below mobilized and followed them with their vehicles. The boy burst through a window in the lower levels and Vegeta followed swiftly after with his fist. “I’LL TEAR THIS WHOLE THING APART!!” he roared with a voice that shook through the city like a sonic boom. He punched holes from the bottom of the building to the top, sending papers and files and even stacks of currency flying. Beneath her feet Bulma felt the building starting to wobble and tremble. She raced to the nearest corner and crouched down, splaying her fingers over the circumference of the lid to the pill bottle and giving it an urgent turn. “Aw damnit!” She whispered to herself as lid lifted to reveal a tough plastic film that could not be simply peeled off or punched through. She snatched a piece of fallen concrete off the floor and struck the film, piercing it with a hole just wide enough to work her finger in and rip it. “Vegeta?! VEGETA TAKE THE PILLS!!” She shouted, running towards the scruff of his head along the edge of a steel beam as the floors to either side disintegrated around her, “YOU JUST NEED TO TAKE THE PILLS!!!” She screeched, and suddenly there was no more floor, no more concrete, no more steel beam, only air and gravity and weightlessness, plunging in the darkness, free falling until Vegeta’s swift black hand gently scooped her out of the air and brought her to his breast, where she was tucked just behind the shell of his tough Saiyan armor. “The pills!” She said, looking over the edge, “Shit I lost them!!!”

“They are not lost.” Vegeta replied, swinging his long tail up from behind, the end of which was curled neatly around the precious jar of pills. But just as Bulma reached to take the jar, the boy with the long black hair instantly materialized before them. He held up both hands and sent energy blasts from each of his palms that hit directly in the center of the great ape’s upper arm as he curled it in front of himself shielding, Bulma and the pills which nestled neatly into the cook of his massive arm. Bulma climbed up to her feet, straddling armor and fur, and when the blasts were gone, she scrambled through the tunnel created by the muscles of his arm and chest and grabbed the bottle from the place in which it was lodged. She felt the great beast shift, and once again his hand was scooping her up, placing her in the courtyard of a penthouse ontop of the closest building to the bank. “You picked the wrong foe to trifle with, boy.” He grumbled. He took a deep, wheezing breath in and from his mouth, let loose a laser cannon that grazed the boy with the black hair and sent him hurtling into the atmosphere at high speed. 

“I gotta admit, this is getting me excited!” Called a voice from the direction of Capsule Corp, “I kinda sorta knew someone had taken on the Ozaru form but . . . seeing in action gets me fired up!”

Vegeta turned his head towards the Capsule Corp building as Bulma raced over the astroturf of the fake penthouse lawn to the edge of the skyscraper. Goku was standing close to the Capsule Corp logo in his gray gi, a charming, almost wicked smile upon his face as he gazed fondly in the great ape’s direction. But as Vegeta fixed his gaze upon Goku, a change in energy, a change in mood and form, seemed to ripple over his largely expressionless face. Suddenly he shrank down, changing from Great Ape to Humanoid effortlessly, his armor and gloves retracting to fit his smaller, leaner body. His hair stood spiked and bristled on its ends, utterly black to match the near invisible suit. From the northwest point in the sky, the boy with the black hair returned, speeding towards him like a rocket, eliciting a ear peeling scream from Bulma, but without losing his visual fix on Goku, Vegeta merely raised his gloved hand behind himself. A cloud of black energy gathered in his empty palm, then separated itself as the boy’s impact became inevitable, and as the boy hit the darkness, he vanished into nothingness, as if the threat never existed. “Kakarot. The void hunts for you.” He said in a voice that was disturbing and penetrative to human ears with Bulma, the West City police, and the increasing crowd of curious citizens venturing out in the dark night covering their ears and dropping to the ground. “We accepted the covenant. We will end it with you.”

Goku sailed gently down from his ledge, “Oh? Here I am! Take your best shot!” Goku replied with a smarmy smile, “Only, you guys should have thought about who you picked as a vessel! You know he was the biggest asshole of this entire universe, always trying to prove something, always trying, but always fucking things up. Well, come on then! You have such an impressive power! You eliminated 17 as easily as one would pop a bubble! So . . . fulfill your mission! What’s wrong? What’s holding you back?” Goku replied with antagonism dripping through his voice.

Vegeta narrowed his eyes. He whipped his tail tightly around his waist and crossed his arms high above his chest, his pupils fixated with fire and hatred on the Saiyan before him.

“Ah, you don’t need to tell me. That’s my employee up there, isn’t it?” Goku said, nodding his head in Bulma’s direction, “You really are so predictab---” but before Goku could finish his words, Vegeta threw a swift punch that Goku nimbly met with his own clenched fist, the two of them thrusting their faces forward, eyes wild, teeth gnashing, a glint of rose rippling over Goku’s black eyes. “Haha oh look at the fight in you! Is this what it wants you to do, or is this the real you I still see in there? Could it be that your hatred for me surpasses your dogmatic dedication to the covenant?!” 

Vegeta gritted his teeth as he pushed his fist back, dark matter surging just beneath his skin until it spiked out of his neck and arms, taking on a form that was somehow between ape and human, canines growing as his face slighty elongated. “I have . . . an agenda . . . to follow!” He said, his Saiyan voice hoarsely spitting out each word.

“But it seems you’re already sidetracked, PRINCE Vegeta!” Goku replied, throwing his weight into his fist a little more.

Vegeta grunted and growled. His shoulders grew broader, his stomach bloated and big. The muscles of his arms thickened, his legs bowed and shortened, but his face and neck and chest remained humanoid as he struggled as if at battle with some unseen entity inside. 

“Get your shit together, then come for me.” Goku said just before sucker punching Vegeta hard to the abdomen with his other hand, curling the Saiyan Prince around his fist until a great glob of saliva flew from his mouth. “She said she’d bring me someone strong.” Goku whispered into Vegeta’s ear as he slowly began to slide off of his fist, “I watched you die on Namek. I covered you in dirt and spit on your grave. How did it feel to be dug up again for the sole purpose of being enslaved? How does it feel to know you’re doomed to keep making the same mistakes again and again? You will never better than me! You’ll never escape your Karma and that is your true punishment!!!” 

Krillin’s hover police cycle came careening over Vegeta’s shoulder with Krillin shrieking in the front seat and Bulma gritting her teeth in the back, leaping forward, her fist smashing into Goku’s cheek with the force of the bike behind her, separating the two Saiyans as pills and Krillin and the bike went flying in all different directions. She shot one hand out to the handbars of the bike and the other to the scruff of Vegeta’s neck, pulling his bulky body with the strength of her adrenaline. “Ok this thing better do something good!!” she said as her fingers quickly plucked over each leaf on the artifact, unleashing a ribbon of energy around them that billowed like a black cloud. She quickly grabbed Krillin by the ankle and pulled him into cloud-like entity before it completely closed up, leaving the three of them bumping around inside in the dark along with the bike. Bulma reached into her back pocket. She fumbled around with the phone, feeling the force of gravity still pulling them down in a free fall. “MOVE THIS THING!!” she screeched at Vegeta as the light from the screen of her phone lit up the inside like a candle a cellar, striking her thumb inadvertently over the screen to where she accidently answered an incoming call from Yamcha. “Babe? Babe are you ok?” he said, the sound of game controller buttons clearly heard even over Krillin’s screams and Vegeta’s grunts as he rapidly began to grow to full sized Ozaru again. “For Kai’s sake NOT NOW YAMACHA!!!” she screamed as the bike bumped up against chest. Out of instinct, she threw her hands out, grasping the handlebars. She pressed her thumb down on the accelerator as soon her knees fit around the fuel tank and propelled the entity up and away from the approaching concrete street. “I can’t see! I can’t see through this thing!!!” she screamed. 

Ozaru Vegeta brought himself up to a sitting position inside the cloud. He leaned forward and the cloud moved with him, bringing the bike central to push against the inside of the cloud’s barrier, propelling them into an unknown direction. He brought his finger up to the artifact and touched his fingernail to the topmost leaf and suddenly there was no cloud, nor was there any bike or Krillin or Ozaru or Bulma. All vanished. All were strangely no more. 


	14. Echoes of a faith gone by

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma, Krilin and Vegeta speed towards the edge of the city in the near invisible cloud of the void. One of them will remain behind, and one of them will dig up a relic from their own past to help fulfill the dark matter's mission. 
> 
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> 
> I'm going to bed early tonight kids, but before I do, have some story on me 😑 ! I really appreciate all the kind comments and messages you've left on this story, and don't worry, the next 4 chapters are going to be action-packed and Vegebul laced (just not this one just yet, he's still a giant monkey lol). It's time this story starts to deliver on the slow burn, so read on and stay tuned 😁😁😁 
> 
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> 
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~~14.~~

“Wh-wh-wh-whAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?” Krillin said, his feet touching down to the top of the building as the protective black cloud disappated beneath them. 

“It just is what it is, GAWD!” Bulma said as she picked herself up after falling hard on her ass, “Antimatter. The blackness of space. And you just HAPPENED to be in it when it deployed!”

“Yeah because you jumped on my bike from behind and said if I didn’t move it, you were gonna slap me!!” Krillin barked back. 

“and if you don’t keep all this a SECRET I still MIGHT!!” Bulma said, leaning down with her hands on her hips, thrusting her face into Krillin’s.

“Secret?! None of this is a secret!! A Giant ape just attacked our downtown!!!”

“That giant ape is still here,” Vegeta warned as he crawled forward on his knuckles, “despite your miniscule size, I can still hear you.”

“GAGH it TALKS?! B-B-B-B-UT, GOKU COULDN’T DO THAT WHEN HE—”

“He’s another Saiyan, moron, he can change too!!” Bulma said as Vegeta approached her from behind.

“B-B-B-BUT TH-TH-THERE’S NO MOON OUT!! HOW IS HE—”

Vegeta swung his massive, hairy arm up in the air and brought the very tip of his finger down gently on Krillin’s helmet-protected forehead. The helmet shifted. Krillin’s wide eyes blinked. “Go home.” Vegeta said, then suddenly as if absorbed into the night, Krillin was gone.

“Ha! Did you see that? You were all like ‘go home’ then suddenly—” She said, feeling the very tip of Vegeta’s finger on the part of her messy blue hair before she suddenly materialized in her own room, in her own home, ontop of her messy, unmade bed, just a mattress on the floor, with crumbs all over one side where Yamcha had obviously slept the night before. “—he was gone.” She said, breathing out as she weakly finished her sentence. She hung her head as the weight of her heart grew heavy. She clenched the sheets as the burning, gnawing feeling of heartbreak began to ache in her chest. She pressed her lips together, biting them from the inside as they began to quiver, hating every tear that quickly crested her lower lids in a flash flood of emotion. “Here again.” She whispered to herself. She leaned forward and buried the heels of her palms into the sockets of her eyes, pressing hard to get the image of ill-gotten shopping bags from her wild shopping trip with 18 out of her mind, a mix of anger and sorrow stoking the embers of pain deep within her as the raw, animal scent of his fur came rushing up from her wrists and arms. “Not fair. This is not fair! Why do you push me away when I—” she said, placing her hands to her side to let her tears cool her hot face. She felt a chip prick her palm, and angrily she smoothed her hand over the sheets and dashed them all away, ants and all. She sat in the dark room seething, her thoughts churning black and violent and sad before falling into a deep, dark despair—every failure, every bright future she’d ever lost, every false, fickle illusion of love, every piece of dirt on the floor, every dollar, nickel and dime she’d ever scratched together just to buy a loaf of bread, every weak smile she’d ever given Tien, or Oolong, or Roshi, or 18, every time she’d ever groveled to ChiChi over being one minute late, every brick that ever fell from the Capsule Corp building, all of it piled on her stupid, crazy, naïve adventure with two shitty aliens in a shitty restaurant on a shitty side of town. “This is not who I am.” She chanted to herself, repeating with a feeling somewhere between persecution and panic until the sun came creeping into the tiny basement window. In the light she could see the window was dribbling ants, their chip-trophies hoisted high above their productive heads, glistening with grease and salt in the sun like diamond kissed gold. For a moment, she imagined them dismantling her life piece by piece, quietly scurrying away an embarrassing failure of a human being too weak and too insignificant to change the things defeating her. A friendly scout ant crawled up to her knee. It twitched its antenna and marched around the flat surface of her kneecap before climbing down again, innocently exploring, alone, perhaps young, perhaps independent of the rest of the ant army, a small iridescent blue sheen to its head. Suddenly, something clicked in Bulma’s mind. She jumped up from the mattress and opened her top dresser drawer, then the next, then the next. She brushed T shirts and jeans and skirts and faded work polos aside, feeling the small twinge of hope almost immediately become overwhelmed by a tsunami of pathetic and loser and failure and dismantling ants cleaning up after the show of Bulma was over. She reached in and wrapped her hand around the device.

Quickly she gathered a set of fresh clothes. She walked upstairs with the clothes and the device, set them all on the bathroom sink, and followed her determination through with a very efficient and thorough shower. She dressed herself and tucked the device under her arm, startling back as she was met by Roshi and Oolong on the other side of the door. “Bulma!!” Oolong exclaimed, “Where the hell have you been??”

“We saw you on the news in the hand of the great ape!” Roshi said, pushing his sunglasses up at the nose.

“Sorry to worry you.” She replied in a flat, almost robotic tone. 

“Worried? We thought you were working with him!” Oolong said, crooking his eyebrow.

“Well, I mean, kind of. Wait, working with him to do what?”

“He destroyed the two biggest debt dealers in west city! Loans and liens and bad mortgages were all wiped out with a swipe of his paw!” Roshi answered, “The people are hailing him as a hero!”

“No. that is not . . . sorry to burst your bubble but that is . . . no.” She said as gently pushed past them.

“He stood up to the west city police and made them retreat without a single casualty.” Oolong said, “He struck the upper floors of Capsule Corp down and knocked all those execs out of their fancy schmancy offices!”

“Ok but that’s not . . . I-It’s complicated.”

“Eh, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you found yourself another Saiyan.” Roshi said as he slowly followed behind her with one hand on his cane and the other hand planted in the small of his back, “Looked just like Goku, with a tail and everything!”

“Found myself another jerk, that’s all.” She mumbled, squinting her eyes slightly as she looked Master Roshi up and down, “Say, is your back ok? You’re kind of walking with a limp.”

“Oh it’s no where near as bad as it was, thanks to you!”

“We’ve been picking up a lot of work downtown so he might have overdone things,” Oolong said as he rubbed together his hooves, “Made enough to pay the power AND the water bill so you don’t have to worry about it!”

“Really? That’s great!” Bulma said, “That was really nice of you two! I really appreciate it.” 

Master Roshi gave a chuckle. He moved quickly with his cane towards the kitchen, his limp seeming noticeably more pronounced in Bulma’s eyes. He reached up into the cabinet for the coffee and suddenly sank back down, dashing his hand to the small of his back once again. He gave a little yelp, then chuckled, “Not 100%, but at my age, I’m grateful for any day I’m not stuck on that couch!”

“Yeah. I bet. Well listen, I’m gonna be out in the garage. I’m working on a project and . . . I’m probably going to be going out later—to test it and stuff. So don’t freak out if I disappear again, ok?” She said as Oolong and Master Roshi hung their heads and searched the floor for answers, their dejection sweetly obvious, flipping the ache in Bulma’s heart on its head. “Ok maybe a cup of coffee first. You’re never going to believe the craziness I’ve seen.”

Bulma looked at the face of the device then to the island just ahead. It was lush with palms and vines, karst rock formations encircling its border like tines on a crown, a deep, round valley within. “This must be the place.” She said to herself as she popped open her capsule carrier, nervously eyeing the swift currents of the water being forced between the mainland and island. There was no beach, no landing, no dock, an island left for birds and dinosaurs, untouched by human beings, uninteresting and unremarkable if it wasn’t for the broken trees and the blip on the screen. She delicately plucked a no. 7 from the capsule carrier and clicked the top, and with a BOM an all-terrain hover cycle appeared. _This better be right, Bulma Briefs_ she thought to herself as she tucked the device into her bra and wrapped her gloved hands around the handlebars.

Inside the island, the air was uncomfortably thick and heavy. Beads of sweat formed on her skin. Overhead, flocks of birds screamed and cawed flew up and down, left and right, violated by the presence not only of a human but of a machine that they’d only ever known for polluting and choking the air on excursions to the city for crumbs. She skillfully guided the hover cycle through tangles of creeping plants the crisscrossed the few faint deer paths like police tape. Every so often she would reach into her shirt and pull out the device, checking the blip on the screen as it grew nearer and stronger. It gave her the confidence to move forward, even when jungle seemed to be moving to close in behind her, even when as the sun was turning rusty gold as it sank behind the mountains into the hidden horizon. 

She came to a place in the island where the rock took precedence over plant, noticing the exposed cliff forming a scoop or ever widening recess. Here the broken trees lay folded against one another, forming a barrier that even the tough hover cycle could not negotiate. Against all better judgement, Bulma dismounted, pressing the button at the very end of the left handlebar to pop it back into its capsule, the madly blinking dime-sized dot on the face of the face of the device confirming the need to move forward. She climbed over the fallen timbers, which smelled sweet and peach-like in their fresh brokenness and moved boldly towards the interior of the cliffs. She walked down a sandy incline where the fog was starting to gather and found herself face to face with two recess caves side by side that were like mirror images of one another. She narrowed her eyes. She moved the device left to right, but the blip on screen seemed confused, switching between them even as she was holding perfectly still. The beads of sweat on her forehead turned from sticky to cold. She reached down to the garter holster of her one long pants leg and pulled out a large, heavy flashlight. She shined its light into the right recess cave and the back could not be immediately seen—it was hazy and brown, its ceiling full of pock marks where fat pigeons were roosting as the night set in. She shined the light into the left cave and it remained utterly black with the beam of light stopping just a few feet in. “Ah ha. Found you.” She said, planting her hand on her hip, her anger slowly resurfacing again as the great Ozaru unfurled from his hiding place.

“T’ch such a meddling woman. I—”

“Before you start to complain, here:” She said, clicking a capsule and throwing it his way. It landed and popped into a large banquet table with a long sub sandwich sitting on top, piled high with tomatoes and lettuce and cheese and meats and dressing, “Had to tell Tien it was for group of wayward orphans, only, he kinda sorta knew it wasn’t for wayward orphans and did it anyway . . . with glee. You might be amused to know that you’ve inadvertently become a bit of a hero to us lowlife scumbag humans.”

“What the—HOW?! WHY?!”

“Well maybe because you destroyed the town’s biggest money lenders, which I’m sure is really going over well with Goku the consummate businessman and his shrew of a wife.” She said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, “You’re welcome by the way. Dig in.” 

Vegeta slowly lowered his hand to the sandwich. He brought it to his nose and sniffed it, then took a cautious, slow bite, tearing the bread and chewing it slowly before shifting his eyes back to the pouty face of Bulma, “How did you find me?”

“With this,” She said, holding up the device, pointing to it, “A modified dragon radar, tweaked to find alien ‘strays’ among Namekians and Yardrat, you know, strays, like you. I made it . . . so you can make it through your hit list faster. The faster you’re done with it, the faster you’ll be done with me, so it’s clearly a win-win.”

“Wh-why do you have to be involved?” He said, shoving the end of the sandwich into his cheek to bite off a good sized hunk.

“Because YOU’RE too big and clumsy to operate it. We don’t have any of the Prussian blue pills and you know Capsule is going to have all the pharmacies in town on lockdown, so for the time being, you’re stuck with me.”

“Why help me at all?” He said between munches, “You could just as easily go free.”

“Right. Why.” She said, her foot tapping impatiently as she began to seethe, “Seems like you want to fade into oblivion as fast as you can, it’s the least I can do to help you get there.”

Vegeta slowed his chewing. He narrowed his glowing red eyes and made a low growl that seemed perfectly at home in the jungle. He lowered his face and body until he was close to her, swallowing the food in his mouth before bellowing out a low, slow “F I N E. When do you want to start?”

“Today. Now. Stuff your gullet and let’s go, ‘hero’. The sooner we get started the quicker we’ll be done. 

“These aliens are not like Namekians or Yardrat. They have powers the likes of which you’ve never seen.” 

“It’s not like I’m unprepared. And If you think you’re going to intimidate me into NOT doing this, you’re wrong—I don’t care how much you growl and grumble, I’m coming along. Hurry up, I want to make it home to my comfy bed at a decent hour tonight.”


	15. Guldo of the Canal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta and Bulma begin their hunt for alien "strays" with the use of the modified Dragon Radar, but will Bulma find herself more engaged with battle than she bargained for?
> 
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> It feels really good to be posting an update tonight. although my kids are back in school and I have a little more time to myself, my mind is so incredibly preoccupied with what's going on politically with the country that it's been difficult to find that proper mind space to write my way to an escape like I'm used to. I really agonized over this chapter, probably because of my highly fractured attention span, but I'm happy with the way it eventually turned out and hope to add more soon :) !! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading my story! if you're in the same boat as I am, I hope I am able to provide a little reprieve from all the heavy stuff going on. Lighten up, treat yourself, indulge in the guilty pleasure of Dragon Ball fanfiction :D get yourself some chocolate or wine or a hot coffee, curl up on the couch and forget about Facebook for a while :D This is just between you and me, ok ? ;) 
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15.

“Why can’t you just ‘poof’?” Bulma said with an expanding gesture.

“Poof, T’ch.”

“Yeah, you know, poof! You did it before!”

“You make it sound so . . . I can’t just make it go POOF.”

“Then what’s the point of the artifact?” She said as the great ape’s head followed slightly in the direction of his heavy eye roll, “I’m being serious! Wouldn’t that be easier than all this sneaking around buildings corners and rooftops?”

“You know what would make all this sneaking around a little more covert? You NOT talking so much!!” Vegeta snapped.

“Well look at you, you’re moving like you’re afraid of waking the baby.”

“What baby?!”

“ANY Baby!! By the rate you’re moving we won’t get to Marijuku till 3 weeks from now!”

“And IF I move any faster all these human buildings will sway and shake and it will be painfully obvious that a giant great ape is casually strolling the neighborhood. Don’t you have anything in that magic capsule case that would make this any easier?”

Bulma started to reach into her pocket, then hesitated. “N-no. But I do have an idea. The blip on the map says that our potential target is somewhere along the west city canal, probably in the restaurant district. How well can you swim?”

“Swim?”

“Yes, swim.”

“You want me to get in the water.”

“Yes.”

“To submerge myself . . . in algae-ridden, fish filled earth water with the slimy plants and muddy silt?”

“Yes.”

“In this fur?!”

“THINK about it – you wouldn’t be walking on the surface anywhere, you’d be gliding up a direct path to whoever this guy is. And besides, you still have a suit on . . . if you’re worried about a fish biting you in the balls—”  
“I am NOT worried about a fish biting me in my . . . my GENITALS! Ooo! Of all the vulgar, infuriating, weak humans I had to be stuck with . . . “

“Weak?! Have you MET me??” Bulma said, scrambling to the wild and bushy top of Vegeta’s head, grabbing the topmost lock and yanking it, “IN!”

The great Ozaru winced. He let out a snarl and lumbered forward into the dark mouth of the canal, “You see!!” He said, spreading his hands down towards his thighs, “This water isn’t nearly deep enough to do that!!” 

“Lay down, stupid!” Bulma snapped back, “Get down in it!! And hurry up before we’re seen!!”

Vegeta gritted his teeth. He grumbled and murmured alien curse words before sliding down into the water on his belly, submerging himself up to his head. “Ridiculous. You would have me crawl like a worm—”

“Hush!” Bulma said, giving Vegeta’s tuft of hair another painful yank, “sink lower, down to your eyes. The Dragon radar says—”

“The what?”

“N-never mind. Just what it used to be called, that’s all.”

“But now you are ashamed to call it that?”

“Noooooo,” Bulma replied in a slightly forlorn voice, “just . . . it was just something kind of pointless, ok? Just nevermind about it.”

The great ape cocked an eyebrow and sank lower into the water, walking along the bottom with his hands. Every so often, his gloved hands would sink deep into the soft river mud and a bristle would ripple over his body all the way up to his head, with the tips of his hair jabbing her like wooden spikes. “You ok down there?” she said, and the great ape flexed and flattened his ears, refusing to answer. 

They came to where the canal branched in two with one tributary leading into the heart of town, dark, murky and industrial, while the other lead to the more touristy side of town where weeping willow trees and clusters of luxurious smelling wisteria flowers hung over decoratively lit aquamarine waters. Lanterns hung from wrought iron posts in the brick walls bracing the canal and let loose a hazy, romantic light. Tiny blue fireflies floated all around, gently and bravely lowering themselves to Bulma’s outstretched hand. She smiled to herself as one landed on her fingertips, admiring its innocent curiosity until it lifted both wings and took off, calling the others to gather and inspect this odd human it had found. She felt the great ape beneath her relax and sink even further into the bright water. She leaned down and scooped up the water with her fingers, delighting in the bath-warm feeling, bringing it up to her nose to indulge in its clean, chemical smell. “I bet that feels nice. I’m almost kind of jealous. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been swimming?”

“It’s your planet so why don’t you?” Vegeta quietly murmured as he subtly surfaced for air.

“Well it’s not like everything belongs to me just because I live here. And besides, I’m . . . Too busy. Too much work. Too much taking care of stuff.” She said with a sigh, relaxing her hold on Vegeta’s hair. She leaned forward, laying on the top of his head, arms encircling his crown as they came to where empty red boats lined the canal, hungry for customers, lonely, bobbing up and down on the pretty waters while Vegeta’s massive body moved underneath. They came to a man in a yellow raft who gave Bulma a puzzled frown. Before he could even ask, Bulma blurted out “It’s a circus float. I’m in the circus.”

The man’s frown deepened. He placed his hand on the motor to his raft and puttered away, forcing a giggle from Bulma that continued until the Dragon radar began to furiously beep. “Vegeta? Vegeta slow down.” She said, tugging on his hair, “The dragon radar says someone’s close. Look around, do you see anyone unusual?”

Vegeta slowly brought his eyes above water level. He scanned the seats beneath each umbrella that lined the street, finding most of them empty. Bulma held the dragon radar in the air before her and moved it side to side, finding the device beeping most furiously only when pointed dead ahead. Before them was a long, flat bridge where every table had an umbrella and each umbrella had been tipped to shade those dinning from the setting sun. As if their minds were in sync, Bulma leaned forward and Vegeta moved forward until they were almost under the bridge. Together they scanned each seat and table but no customers were to be had except for one squat snot green alien that was sitting at the centermost table languidly dipping a long, thin spoon into a tall pile of frozen yogurt as he tapped through the screen of his phone, reading news stories with all four of his eyes. “I see someone.” Bulma whispered, “Dip down below the water, let me talk to him.”

Vegeta made a grumbling sound deep in his chest that made the water around him ripple in concentric rings. He sank so low that Bulma was forced to stand within the highest stalks of his upward pointed hair. On the bridge above them, the stray alien jumped to his feet and ducked his head in every direction. He placed his hand on the metal spoon rattling against the glass yogurt dish as if shushing it to listen, then slowly, cautiously shifted all four of his eyes in the direction of the vibration. “What kind of thing is this?” he spat out, spying Bulma and the odd patch of hair she was standing on, “You there, girl, what is this?”

“Wha-what’s what?”

“This thing you’re standing on, it’s making the whole bridge shake! Is this some sort of college prank?”

“College pra—ye-yeah! It’s umm . . . . a pledge. I’m being pledged into a sorority! Kai-alpha-gorilla, you know . . . v-v-very elite. Very important . . . and stuff.”

“Hmph what would someone like you know about becoming ‘elite’.” He said, planting his hands on his hips as all four of his eyes gave Bulma an up and down glance, “You look like some common, ordinary punk, and a lame one at that. Did you dye your hair with kool aid or what?”

“It’s my natural hair color, thank you. I’m one of the Briefs, it’s kind of a family trait.”

“Oh well then Princess of all Briefs, please do carry on down the canal on that dead animal or whatever that is. Did you stuff a subwoofer in a buffalo carcass just so you could annoy all the paying customers up and down canal street?”

“It’s performance art,” Bulma replied, “Sorry you don’t get it.”

“Ah let me guess—‘girl adrift on hairball, an examination on the futility of vanity’? You’d get more attention shaking those knockers of yours on a stage somewhere if that’s what you’re going for.” he said with a smug and snickering laugh, “Oh honey I don’t know how to tell you this but people like you don’t move up society’s chain, you must know that this sorority of yours is laughing at you behind your back for all the ridiculous things you agree to do just to get in their good graces” He said as he crossed his arms and shifted his weight back to his heels, “Someone like me was born for greatness, a no brainer, first choice of Captain Ginyu, why, if we weren’t all stuck on this godforsaken planet, I’d probably be the new leader of the Frieza force by now, not that you’d understand. Someone like you would be lucky to graduate from a refrigerator box to a tent while you spend your days living on the street.”

“I’m not homeless.” Bulma said, her looks growing hard and cold as she crossed her arms over her chest, “Even if I was, that wouldn’t give you the right to disrespect me.”

“Awwwww sugar whatcha gonna do about it?”

Bulma tilted her head and let a small, menacing smirk curl the very corner of her mouth. She quickly brought her leg up and brought it down hard on Vegeta’s submerged head, cracking him in the skull with her heel. All at once the ground began to tremble—the boats in the canal bobbed sharply up and down, the silt from the bridge fell like waterfalls. The stray alien stumbled back and waved his arms to keep balance while Bulma remained very still with her two deep blue eyes fixed upon him until the great Ozaru emerged, canal water falling heavy from the fur of his shoulders and arms, great red eyes glowing with seething hate. “OW WHY DID YOU KICK ME SO HAR—” He roared, his eyes suddenly zeroing in on the little green man. He planted both hands to either side of the bridge and gave a low growl, slinging a stream of water from the hair of his chin as he growled the name “G U L D O” 

“I don’t know who you are but leave me alone!!” Guldo shouted as Bulma quickly climbed down Vegeta’s arm and jumped to the bridge, “She knows !! I told her !! I told her I was part of the Ginyu squad before the events on Namek!! I’m a very dangerous person you know!!”

“Oh I know. I was there. I remember.” Vegeta replied, “I remember every shitty thing you did, your jealousy of me, your petty, passive attempts to smear my name and sabotage my efforts. That was always the game with you, wasn’t it? Slowly chip away at my reputation . . . to insert yourself in front of leadership every chance you got. It gives me so much pleasure to see that you’re even fatter than last time I saw you.“

“V-V-Vegeta? How?! You—you were dead!! I saw it! We all saw it!”

Bulma reached into her inside breast pocket. She quickly picked over the capsules inside, staying just behind the alien’s side eyes as he and the great ape remained engaged in conversation.

“They summoned me.” Vegeta replied, “To take care of those who should have never been victorious. I shall take great delight in killing you today, Guldo, in fact, it’s taking quite a bit of power out of me . . . to keep this thing . . . this thing inside of me . . . from voiding you on the spot.” He said, his voice tinged with the same unsettling vibration as it had in his battle against Goku , “It doesn’t understand the pleasure of suffering quite like I do. It doesn’t understand . . . that there are those whose karma is better satisfied by pain.” He said, , “But I do, and that’s the chance they took in resurrecting me.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I always stayed clear of you in battle, always!” 

“The way you bad mouthed me every time my back was turned . . . the way you subtly tried to tear me down . . . to think you were both threatened and jealous . . . of my time as a SLAVE!!!” Vegeta said with a roar, bringing his giant fists down to either side of the bridge, severing both sides from the mainland so that the bridge was shaped like a T, “You saw the scars all over my body every time Frieza had my battered carcass hauled back to the healing pods and STILL you took envy of me, STILL you shit all over every hellish battle I single handedly won! Yet you wouldn’t have the nerve to put yourself in my position. You would have never risked your life the way I did, and you STILL think of some sort of warrior? You? A four eyed, foul breathed freak?!”

“Now now, no need to take these things so personally, we were all trying to get into Frieza’s good graces back in the old days, weren’t we?” Guldo stammered, his foreeye rolling to its extreme sides to see Bulma still fumbling with her case of capsules, “Oh would you look at that?” He said, taking a deep, sharp breath in and holding it, bringing the whole world to a stop. He jogged over to Bulma as fast as his stubby legs could carry him and lifted up her shirt, tucking the ends deep into her armpits. He unbuckled her bra and yanked it down to her elbows, admiring her exposed breasts for a few moments before jogging off in the opposite direction, resuming his previous position on the bridge, “Looks like your lady friend has turned into a flasher!”

Vegeta glanced at Bulma and Bulma to Vegeta before realizing that her bra was hanging off of her wrists. She gave a gasp and the great ape ducked his head in sudden awkaward embarrassment, the skin beneath the fur of his cheeks burning a scarlet red. “Why, Vegeta! Who would have thought you’d be embarrassed for such a common, ordinary street slut!”

“What the hell was that?! You total DICK!!!” Bulma screeched. She lunged forward, bringing one arm protectively across her breasts as she cocked the other back, and just as she was in slapping distance, Guldo held his breath again, freezing the frothing spit in her gritted teeth, pausing the voluptuous bob of her bare breast, crystalizing the fine spray kicked up by Vegeta’s knees as he charged forward in the glimmering, aquamarine water of the canal, halting every bristling shaft of hair on Vegeta’s poised arm as he positioned it just above the alien’s lumpy green head. Guldo pursed his lips tight. He grabbed Bulma by the belt and quickly undid the clasp, bringing her pants down her smooth hips and thighs until he could tighten the belt around her knees. He quickly jumped backwards, out of the path of Vegeta’s massive fist, his breath shortened by the excitement and strenuousness of the sudden, unexpected fight. He exhaled and time began again with Bulma instantly falling flat on her face with her ass up in the air, presenting her high-cut strawberry panties full-on to the great ape.

But Vegeta’s punch was already in motion, falling heavy and fast to the bridge, missing the mark as his eyes pulled towards Bulma’s deliciously shaped and decoratively wrapped ass. His hand slipped over the side of the bridge and slapped flat into the water, forcing a tidal wave that spilled onto the street that washed boats into tables and cars into chairs and booths into windows in a mishmash of plastic and fiberglass and metal. The weight of his gigantic body clumsily followed the punch, brining his face crashing down to the surface of the bridge with his nose landing so closely behind Bulma’s upturned ass that a sudden inward snort brought her round ass—soft panties and all—suctioned against his flared nostril.

Guldo turned to admire his handiwork. He laughed so hard that he grabbed the circumference of his round belly and doubled over, his squat little legs nearly jumping off the ground in glee over the sight of this half-dressed blue haired human female stuck to a giant Saiyan Ozaru by the nose. “Oh ruiner of worlds!!” he laughed, “Oh look at me I’m a planet buster with a woman stuffed up my snorter like a piece of toilet paper!!” 

Bulma turned her hips back and forth and yanked her pants back up to her waist as soon as she was free. She threw her bra to the street and pulled her shirt down, marching towards Guldo unnoticed as his belly laugh grew into howls of delight where he wrapped his arms around himself and closed all 4 of his eyes as they began to water. Bulma grasped the biggest capsule out of her Hoi Poi case. She threw it to the ground and kneeled down, and just as the capsule popped, she took both handles to the instant mounted machine gun in her hands and let the ammo belts rain bullets down on Guldo’s fat, bloated body, bouncing him into the air on a jet stream of copper of gold as Vegeta righted himself behind her, bringing a monsoon of water dripping from his fur down onto the bridge until a thin, white foam frothed through the cracks of the bridge up to the very soles of her tattered red sneakers. “How much more of this must I TOLERATE?!” he shouted, striking Guldo as though he were a beach ball, slamming the impudent alien into the wall of a nearby skyscraper. Vegeta’s fist followed soon after, but Guldo—being smaller and more agile by size—slipped away just as the ape’s knuckles plowed a garage door-sized hole through the lower level of the building.

“This form!!! This damn form!!!” Vegeta roared as Guldo bounded down the alley away from the girl and the ape, “I can’t DO anything like this!!!”

“I got it I got it!!” Bulma snapped as she restored the mounted gun to its capsule, “I’m going after him!” 

“The hell you are!! What if he had done worse than expose you?!”

“Just trust me on this, ok?! Go THAT WAY!!” She said, pointing further up the illuminated canal. 

Vegeta narrowed his eyes. He gave a snort and slapped his palm against the water, then laid down in it again to glide upstream. “Please have fuel please have fuel please have fuel” she chanted as she quickly brought her thumb down against the tab of another capsule. With a BOM an old dirt bike appeared, still caked with mud from a long-forgotten adventure that had taken place forever ago. She mounted the bike and turned the throttle up full force as soon as the ignition engaged the motor, buzzing down the city streets to where the little green man was huffing and puffing his way to an escape. Bulma’s eyes became laser set, tracking him as she stole wary glances at the fuel gage and the road and at screaming passerbys. She reached into her shirt pocket again and as soon as her fingers traced over the tiniest capsule in the weapons side of the Hoi Poi case, she pressed its tab, deploying a long, gleaming silver Katana to her hand. “You’ve GOT to be kidding me I thought that was a pistol!!” She shouted out over the sound of the engine to herself. She leaned into the sharp turns Guldo tried to make in his attempts to evade, the light of the weekday city street gleaming off of her blade, catching the attention of his foreeyes as they slid to their very corners out of fear. He let out a sound somewhere between a squeal and scream as she zoomed in close on the cycle, cutting off his intended escape route. By the time he noticed that she had herded him back towards the canal, he was already on the open street. 

Guldo spun around on his heels, turning his back on the canal to face Bulma. He gritted his teeth and squatted, puffing himself up, all four of his eyes burning with seething hate towards her. “YOU WANNA SEE WHAT I CAN REALLY DO, GIRLIE?! WELL YOU ASKED FOR IT!!! YOUR NAME’S GONNA BE ON EVERY NEWS BROADCAST AND MAGAZINE IN THE CITY!! I’LL UNDRESS YOU AND PARADE ALLLLLLLL YOUR NAUGHTY BITS AROUND FOR THE WHOLE CITY TO SEE!!! PRINCESS BRIEFS THE EXHIBITIONIST EXPOSED LIKE THE SLUT SHE I----”

Bulma swept the katana over her left shoulder and struck it down in a diagonal slice. The feeling of smooth steel gliding over Guldo’s bumpy, leathery skin vibrated through the sword and up through her hands like a message in braille that her strike was more than just skin deep. She let loose an EEP as Guldo’s head slid from his shoulders and plopped to the ground neatly at his own feet. “Oh my Kami!! Oh My KAMI I killed someone!!!” 

“Dead?!” Guldo croaked as all four of his eyes threw daggers up to Bulma, “Don’t flatter yourself!! It’s gonna take a lot more than that to kill Guldo of the Ginyu For—" 

Vegeta’s massive paw popped out of the canal and squashed Guldo violently into the concrete with an audible pop, splattering purple blood and guts all over the colorful patio umbrellas and wrought iron patio furniture lining the canal, drawing gasps from everyone in sight, including Bulma. All at once, her knees knocked into one another. Her hands flew to her mouth. She tried to scream like the other humans fleeing the scene, but could only manage a weezing, high pitched mouthful of “YOU . . . . YOU . . . YOU C-C-C-CRUSHED HIM!!”

“T’ch well . . . well OF COURSE what did—I’m an OZARU THAT’S WHAT WE DO!!!” He said as he struggled to sit up in the canal.

“DID YOU HAVE TO SMEAR HIM LIKE A BUG?!”

“WAS I SUPPOSED TO CORDUALLY INVITE HIM TO A DUEL?!”

“NO BUT WHY WOULD YOU—HOW COULD YOU JUST . . . .?!”

“WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO, WOMAN?!”

“JUST . . .. OOOHHHH!!!!!!” Bulma said as her eyes grew even wider at the mess of Guldo street pizza beneath Vegeta’s hand, “WHAT TH—WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO ABOUT THAT?!”

Vegeta examined the flesh and brains and bones sticking out of the heel of his palm. His lips upturned and his brows took turns arching and flattening. Without saying anything further, he scraped the heel of his hand against the edge of the canal and wiped the remains of Guldo against the brick and concrete. 

“EWW WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??!!!!” Bulma screeched.

“Disgusting.” Vegeta murmured as he rinsed his hand off in the water, “This is why I wear gloves!!”

“Just---just please PLEASE tell me he was one of the people from your list!!”

Vegeta turned his palm to look at it again. He stared at the purple and green stain on the street and on the heel of his hand and scraped it against the canal wall again.

Bulma rolled her eyes and plowed her hands through her hair. “HOW MANY MORE OF THESE GUYS ARE THERE?!”

“Enough to wait another night.”

“HOW. MANY.?”

Vegeta sat back into the water and crossed his arms over his chest, counting with his fingers peaking out from behind his arm, “Burter, Jeuice, Captain Ginyu . . . . . and . . . . Kakarot.”

“Kakarot,” she repeated, her hand brushing over the ancient dirt still clinging to her rusty old bike, “Fine. But we’re not squishing those guys like cockroaches, you hear me?!”

“I had this form imposed upon me by YOU!” Vegeta said, bringing the line of his brows just above the edge of the bridge, “You HARDLY have the grounds to CHIDE me for its use!!”

“I—I don’t want you to, ok?” She said, slowly averting her eyes from him as she brushed more of the dusty red clay from the numbers on her bike absent-mindedly, “Please.”

Vegeta gave a muffled “T’ch.”, then extended his paw palm up just in front of her. With a pout Bulma returned the sword and the bike to their Capsules and climbed onto his hand, allowing him to bring her to his shoulder, keeping her high and dry as he followed the canal back towards the island. 


	16. A new invention - terror strikes Marijuku !

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma's rude awakening turns into her pursuit of a new invention, but a surprise at Piccolo's art shop spoils her plans to finish it - is the Vanta Black up to no good or has something else brought destruction to the alien side of town?
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> Say, are you following my blog on Tumblr? If not, you're missing out on some outstanding Fanart and videos carefully cultivated by yours truly (never drawn by me tho, drawing is not my talent 😂) You can find my blog by searching my username OR searching for the blog name IndulgentVegFandom -- it's like maybe 99% Vegeta related stuff and 1% DBZ memes 😂. Also, when I post a link to a new chapter, I try to match the music I was listening to at the time of writing to the new passage to hopefully give the reader a more "full bodied" reading experience, if that makes any sense. Anyways, if you're on my side of the world. have a happy thanksgiving but PLEASE, please be safe! Covid is real and it has recently taken someone close to me, so please take it seriously and do the mask, the handwashing, the social distancing because I want you to read this till the end 🤗
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And although Bulma did indeed return to her bed that night, she did not sleep. 

All night long she tossed and turned, rolling from one side to the next, turning from stomach to back to stomach again, sleeping only in small episodes that ended with the feeling of green, warty skin brushing the very tips of her nipples, of rush of cold night air wooshing up her flimsy and sullied shirt, her breasts dropping bouncy and heavy for all his four eyes to see. In her mind she could hear the thunderous voice of the Ozaru, repeating over and over in a glitch of skipping time _What if he had done worse than expose you”_ each skip more intense than the one before until eardrums began to ring. She dashed her hand to the center of her shirt and startled at the feeling of a man’s hand passing over both her breasts. She let out a gasp and opened her eyes wide, crushing the hand beneath the fabric of her shirt with a sudden, strong clutch. “OW babe I’m sorry!!!” Yamcha whined, “Let go babe geez!!!!”

“Yamcha! What the hell were you thinking!” Bulma said as she sat up and pulled the covers up to her armpits, “What gives you the right to j-j-just start FEELING ME UP like that?!”

“I was just trying to get things started a little, that’s all!!” Yamcha said as he shook out his hand, “it’s not like I was raping you or something! ow OW why’d you have to do that for?!”

“Well I don’t know Yamcha when someone SNEAKS into my bed and helps themselves to my body it kind of sort of IS like rape!!!”

“Oh come on. This is supposed to be OUR bed!” He said as he watched her stand up and stomp off towards the door.

“You said you were moving out!”

“I-I know, but . . . babe I’ve had some thoughts and . . . I know you’re under a lot of stress at your job and—”

“Yeah I don’t have a job now Yamcha. In case you HAVEN’T HEARD, Capsule Corp was kind of sort of destroyed. It was kind of a big THING that happened in this town!!”

“Well, yeah I heard but . . . what I mean is, like, I know you’ve been under a lot of stress and I just thought maybe we should work things out instead of just throwing it all away. I mean, don’t you remember how good things were? When it was just you and me?”

Bulma wrapped her arms around herself at the breasts and leaned into the doorframe, “Well it got to a point where it couldn’t BE just you and me . . . that’s why Master Roshi and Oolong and here.”

“Well, I know but . . . I mean, the economy . . . and plus the fact that there are no jobs around here,” He said, as she rolled her eyes and started out of the door, “No WAIT I mean, ok, you’re right but what I’m saying is, I can’t stop thinking about the way things used to be with us. I miss you! I miss you so much Bulma!! This whole thing is like, really breaking my heart.”

“Well you can’t just zip yourself up to second base and expect me to be fine with it, especially after you said we were done!!”

“You said some things too! Can’t we just say it’s water under the bridge?” He said, pushing himself up from the bed, rushing up to her, leaning with one arm raised above his head into the front of the door frame, his dark eyes glistening in the early morning light. He boldly reached his other arm out to her, snaking his hand around her hip to the small of her back, “I miss you. You’re the best thing in my life and I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you. Please Bulma, we don’t need anyone else. Love is hard—aren’t we worth fighting for?”

“Yamcha I—” But before she could finish, Yamcha dipped his face into hers and kissed her with his cold, slippery lips, still with the faint taste of mountain herb permeated deep within his breath and cool, drooling saliva. He stepped through the door frame and brought his other arm around her, kissing her deeply until some modicum of warmth could be found deep within, warming like dessert sands under the rising sun, dry and sterile but somehow still sincere. She allowed herself to sink slightly into his embrace and thought of those moments when they had first met, how young, how innocent, how much she had wanted to give this shy, feral dessert bandit all the romance and adventure she had ever craved. 

“Forgive me?” he said.

“I-I . . . I have some things to do in the garage today.”

“Yeah, ok.” 

“I’m going to be in there all day so don’t—”

“Don’t disturb you, I know.” He replied with a chortle, “Well I’m going to go out and look for a job since, you know . . . I want to contribute too, I don’t want it to be all you.”

“Alright well, I guess we’ll see each other later?”

“Yeah, you know, just . . . don’t get so focused on work that you forget about me.”

“Right. Later.”

Bulma surrounded herself with tools, pulled from every drawer and pegboard, tools of every specialty—as if some reverent ritual she felt over and gripped every one of them, squeezing triggers, clicking, sorting, then suddenly, as if catching the scent of innovation, she began the act of making. With the sunlight shut out she focused solely on the blending of gears and motherboards, diodes and levers and screws. Her fingers became stained from grease and pocked marked by the accident touch of the soldering iron and drill. Her eyes became so accustomed to looking through the magnifying glass and welding helmet that her true vision felt plain and 2D when it wasn’t on the target. Every so often she would dash her hand to her breasts, her focus corrupted equally by the memory of Guldo and Yamcha’s hands. “If that little green piece of shit could do it,” She whispered to herself as she calibrated the sensors of the device over and over again, “I can do it.”

Twelve hours passed. No breakfast, no lunch, Bulma emerged from the garage at 6pm with only the vaguest sense of hunger. “Where’s Yamcha?” She said to Oolong as she absentmindedly picked through the kitchen cabinets. 

“Beats me. Haven’t seen him all day.” He said as he wrapped his hooves around his cup of tea, “Where the heck have you been??”

“In the garage.”

“Still working on that project?”

“New one. And I need to know where Yamcha is.”

“I’m not in charge of him,” Oolong snorted, “Usually when he’s out this late he’s with one of his Rom Riot buddies getting wasted out of his mind on the ol magic leaf.” 

“Right.” Bulma replied as Master Roshi pace his way into the room. She followed him with her eyes as he walked to the end of the kitchen counter and reached far above his head to reach the snacks, winching and clutching his back suddenly as he caught hold of a bag of chips. “Say, is your back doing ok?”

“Oh, what? It’s fine! Just a little cranky, that’s all heh heh Ohhh!” He wined as he rubbed the small of his back.

“Have you seen Yamcha today?”

“Oh I guess I haven’t noticed! Was too busy looking at the hot girls in your fashion magazines heh heh heh!”

“Oh Kami I so need to cancel that subscription.”

“Why do you need to know where Yamcha is anyways?” Oolong said, cocking his eyebrow, “I mean, not to be a jerk here, but who the hell cares where he’s at, at least he’s not here making a mess out of everything.”

“I was hoping we could have dinner before I go out tonight.”

“Dinner?”

“He . . . we talked this morning and—”

Master Roshi and Oolong gave a collective groan. “And he told you he was gonna change and baby I want you back and blah blah blah.” Oolong said, moving his hoof in a circular motion as he sank low in the kitchen chair.

“Guys come on, I know when he’s being real. I mean, we have a history . . . I’ve got to give him the benefit of the doubt.” She said with a shrug, “He doesn’t do this on purpose! He means well, he’s just clueless, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s not up to an old fart like me to tell a young girl otherwise but, if I were as pretty as you, I’d be out bangin’ everyone in sight!!”

“I don’t . . . ugh I don’t want to just BANG people, ok? Gross.”

“Look I don’t wanna put it quite that way but, the old geezer is right. You’ve got options. You don’t have any ties to him, why not just put him out on his ass and let him figure it out on his own?”

“I . . . I don’tknow. I’m not good at this, ok? I don’t think he’s lying. I think all he needs is some place he fits in or . . . to have something just good and steady to get a taste of what that’s like. Maybe he never really had that before.”

“Oh no, he’s had it before. And blew it. And blew it again.” Oolong mumbled.

“You guys please let’s . . . let’s just have a little faith in him, ok? I’m going to take a shower. If he doesn’t call or show up then—”

“We’ll go get our own. C’mon Roshi.”

Bulma felt her heart sink slightly as Oolong and Roshi readied themselves to leave. She sent a quick text message to Yamcha, checking it for replies before her shower and after she emerged smelling wonderful from her perfumed shower gel and lotion and body spray, but even after sitting alone on her bed until the last gasp of light could be seen from her window, there was no reply. The sickening sweet smell of her perfumed soap became bothersome. She dressed herself in a button up, bell sleeved blouse with tight fitting bibbed overalls strapped protectively over her breasts. She laced up her boots and gave a sigh as she checked her phone one last time—no message, no reply. So much for second chances.

But whatever sadness and disappointment threatened to drag her into the depths of helplessness dissipated like fog in the sunlight as she entered the streets of Marijuku, where the residents had no obligation to sleep through the night, and their goings-on were just as vibrant and energetic at 11pm as the human’s town square was at noon. The freedom she felt in being there washed over her in a wave of relief—the perfume she had doused herself in no longer felt antagonistic, the glare of Namekian eyes no longer made her feel as though she were trespassing, she felt no need to grab the phone in her pocket and check for messages that never seemed to come, she instead closed her eyes and swayed the bike gracefully back and forth, resting squarely in her self confidence as she navigated her route down the street from Frieza’s, past all the little vending machines, where no palms grew and few lanterns were bothered to be lit, where the street gave the satisfying crunch of loose gravel beneath the bike as she brought it up to the curb, only this time she wasn’t spying on a fry cook. There was one more thing needed for the day’s invention, one more item needed to bring it alive, and Piccolo would surely know how to get it. 

Bulma thrust her hands into the front pockets of her bibbed overalls as she entered Piccolo’s art shop, softly elbowing the bright white canvases that populated the shop like stacks of unopened Christmas gifts. But at the end of all the dusty aisles, the track lights over the clerk’s desk shone on a strangely empty chair. “Hello? Anyone here?” she called as she wandered deeper into the store, “Piccolo? Sir? I’m here to buy something this time. I mean it.”

From the back of the store, Bulma heard a loud clamor like metal falling. She trotted cautiously to the very back, glancing over her shoulder briefly before pressing her hand flat against one of the double swinging doors marked “exit”. “Mr. Piccolo?” She whispered, and just as the very tips of the pads of her slightly trembling fingers touched the second set of double doors leading to the store room, something on the far wall of the other side catastrophically collapsed. The double doors blew open, knocking Bulma against the wall. The blast rolled through the store, throwing the canvases up into the air and down to the floor like an angry poker player throwing their cards. Bulma struggled to catch her breath from the sudden horror. She placed her hand over her heart and quickly changed glances between the front door and the back. She thrust her hand into her pocket, not knowing which to clutch first—the katana capsule from the night before or her phone. “M-m-MR PICCOLO?!” She cried out suddenly without clutching either one of them, “PICCOLO ARE YOU OK?!” 

Bulma thrust her shoulder into the double doors and pushed her way through. Dark gray bricks littered the floor, paint cans tumbled down the collapsed shelves, silica slid from slit bags in waterfalls of natural glitter, reflecting the brilliant strobe of the shop lights as they swung from the skeleton of the ceilng. She buried her face in her elbow as a cloud of black dust billowed. “What happened here?” She whispered into her sleeve, “What happened what do I do?? Piccolo? Piccolo??” She called again, trotting bravely into the expanse. From the center of the room something stirred—it turned in circles quickly, swimming through the dust, a light color of black, indistinct except for two red eyes that occasionally flashed out from the center of its self-made whirlwind. From between two slender tendrils It let loose a blast of energy that blew away what remained of the ceiling. The thing grew sleek and compact, shooting out of the building in a vortex of silica glitter and grit, dropping a white and purple turban to the floor behind it with a heavy thud. 

_THE RADAR, DUMMY_ flashed through Bulma’s mind as painfully as a sudden headache. She quickly slid the repurposed dragon radar from the breast pocket of her bibs and positioned herself over the turban, holding the device up to the sky. The dragon radar faintly blipped and beeped. She pressed record and captured its signature as a small crowd of alarmed Namekians and curious Yardrat flooded into the building. “Has it turned on us?? The Vanta black??”

“Nonsense!!”

“It was dark and cloudy and dangerous! What else could have done something like this!”

“That wasn’t what it was,” Bulma said to the voices all around her as she kept her chin tucked up to the sky, shaking her head slightly in total disbelief, “That’s not what it was. It couldn’t be.” She said, changing the band on the radar to search for Vegeta.

“What could possibly overwhelm a Warrior class Namekian?”

“It HAS turned on us!”

Bulma quickly turned away from the backroom as the angered Namekian mob began to encroach, wading through the fallen canvases to get to the front of the store. She hopped on her bike and carefully steered it around the stricken and outraged spectators, gently accelerating up the street to keep the engine noise down, glancing every so often over her shoulders to the sky. Bulma heard another rumble behind herself, and it seemed to shake every Namekian out of every row house door and every alley between every brownstone until they were all fleeing out towards the scene of the crime. She tucked her face down behind the small windshield of the bike, and subtly tugged the bell sleeves of her blouse over her visible skin. 

The first non-Namekian face she saw was that of a young adult Yardrat as he was being thrust out of the door of Frieza’s. “To think I’d have to dirty my hands with you!” Frieza said as he heaved the Yardrat out into the street like a sack of rotten food. He pointed one finger up in the air and a small laser light formed just above it, shining bright and menacing, casting a red shine to Frieza’s tiny, irregular gritted teeth, “You STEAL and you make a menace of yourself every time you come here!! I can respect a thief, but I absolutely cannot tolerate a FOOL!!” 

“FRIEZA!!!” Bulma shouted as she quickly accelerated, curling the bike around the boy defensively.

The stricken Yardrat looked up to Bulma in awe. He reached out to her pant leg and clutched it, then flipped over and scooted on his back, stumbling comically as he came upright and faceplanted to the street again before finally making his escape through the crowd of Namekians, now growing thin as they made their way down the street to Piccolo’s.

“Oh as IF I wouldn’t have blown you away too! You’re not exactly real high on my list of favorite people at the moment.”

“Yeah and murder is illegal everywhere on planet Earth so excuse me if maybe saved you a jail sentence.”

Frieza gave a deep roll of his eyes. He crossed his arms and pursed his lips, flicking his tail like a cat, “Umm hmmm ho hum oh no please don’t let me rot in a flimsy human prison with my nice neat little cot and hospital food, I just don’t know how I’d ever manage. Oh please don’t punish me with enclosing me in with well-muscled, dim witted idiots hungry for revenge, I never do well in those situations at all!” He said, throwing his hands in the air. He paused. His eyes grew suddenly sharp and narrow. He gave Bulma a look up and down and said, “And what exactly are you doing on this side of town at a time like this? Without HIM??”

“I don’t NEED an escort to go to Marijuku!”

“Well you picked a hell of a night to declare your feminist independence! Sounds like a bomb went off down there!!”

“So you heard—"

“The big boom? Oh yes, I heard it. They all went running out after it and that’s when your little victim took it upon himself to flood the restaurant with his duplicates. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he would have stuck with stealing the food left on customer tables, but when one of him decided to stick his hand in the cash register—”

“Duplicates?” 

“THEY CAN DUPLICATE THEMSELVES!! THEY CAN TELEPORT, THEY CAN GROW GIAGANTIC, THEY CAN DO ALL OF THESE THINGS WITH THEIR BLASTED YARDRAT MAGIC AND THINK NONE THE LESSER OF USING IT FOR PETTY PURPOSES!!” Frieza spat out, “BUT *I* AM STILL EMPEROR, AND THEIR TRICKS ARE NOTHING BUT A PISS POOR ATTEMPT TO MAKE THEMSELVES POWERFUL, THAT I CAN EASILY SEE THROUGH WITH MY SUPERIOR EYES!!” Frieza shouted out to the empty buildings around them. “Now, PLEASE tell me you are here with SOMETHING that is going to return my kitchen monkey back to his kitchen!!!”

“Look, there was . . . I was at the shop when it was attacked, and I’m . . . “ Bulma said, closing her eyes suddenly to stop her stammer and recenter her thoughts, “Vegeta and Piccolo didn’t have any kind of ‘beef’ did they?”

“Oh nobody’s fond of Monkey Boy around here, princess.” Frieza said, drawing his words out slow as if accentuating every syllable with a hidden venom. “What is it, what are you alluding to?”

“I was in the back of the store and . . . I heard a cry. I opened the door and there was this black cloud and—”

“Black?!” Frieza quietly hissed, “BLACK black, as in, HIS color black??”

“IT WASN’T—I mean, it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t the same color of black it was, like an off black, like a faded out concert t shirt or something, like . . . like not dark enough.”

Frieza gave a growl. “In here,” He said, tilting his head towards the door as he grabbed Bulma firmly under her bicep. As soon as they passed through the threshold, Frieza looked around himself and locked the door. “The Namekians don’t make that color unless it’s AB-solutely necessary and this is precisely the reason why! If there was some ‘thing’ at Piccolo’s tonight you can bet it was trying to steal whatever material he uses to concoct that accursed paint! And now the two of you need to find it and stop it before it succeeds!”

“Frieza they’re down there calling for his head right now!” Bulma hissed.

“Of course they are! If it weren’t for this damn covenant, they would already have it! Imagine if half the people of this GROTESQUELY populated planet were single handedly wiped out by one single alien being! His tongue was an insult of a consolation prize after the events on Namek!”

“He-he did what?”

“Killed them! Whole villages of them, wiped out!” Frieza said as his tail roiled behind him, “His hatred, his ambition, his driving need for power, his PRIDE drove him to genocide and these people will NEVER forget it! And they would never let HIM forget it!”

“I just . . . I can’t see him doing that. Why tolerate him if he’s this . . . mass murderer?”

“Have you not heard a SINGLE word I’ve said to you??” Frieza said through gritted teeth as he renewed his grip on Bulma’s bicep, “Go find that monkey and get that accursed substance back to the shop!! It CANNOT fall into the wrong hands!!” He said, pushing her towards the door as he let go of her arm.

Bulma gave a deep frown. She dusted her hands over the front of her bibs, fluffing her hair as Frieza spun on his heels, turning his back to her. She took a deep breath and passed through the restaurant doors, seating herself on the bike as two broke-down looking firetrucks piloted by a handful of sloppily dressed Namekians passed by, making lazy siren sounds. She pulled out the modified dragon radar and clicked through the stored alien signatures, panning the sensors all the way out to the river and gasping when the largest blip on the screen appeared almost right next to where she was sitting on the map. “He’s here. He’s in Marijuku,” she whispered to herself, “Son of a bitch!” 

Bulma pulled away from the curve, following the large blip on the modified dragon radar. But deep in the shadows of a nearby alley, a young purple alien flexed the hand that had clutched her pant leg and made a strong mental note of the signature of her ki . . . 


	17. Fight in the abandoned Cannery - The terror of Dr. Cui !

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma is determined to find Piccolo, but Vegeta has other priorities. Will the abandoned Cannery on the city's north side prove to be a safe place, or will they find a terror unimaginable to them both?
> 
> \------------------------------
> 
> Ok so I've actually been sitting on this chapter since last week because I didn't want to put it out there until I got it *JUST*RIGHT* . It's a long one, but I'm very happy with the way the action turned out and I think you will be too :) You guys have been leaving me so many amazing comments and I def plan on coming back to reply to some of them later tonight or tomorrow, but until then THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for reading and believing in this story. I honestly wasnt sure how the vegebul community would react to a story that's more scifi than romance, but . . . we're getting there :) we. are. getting there. you'll see lol. 
> 
> This will probably be my last update on the story for 2020 so a big HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you all :) !!
> 
> \---------------------------------------------




Bulma trotted into the warehouse feeling an odd sense of emotions—at midnight, leaving her bike outside, trotting into a dark, empty building with peeling paint and rusty rafters, a fear of ghosts, rapists, robbers, boogey men, alien men, iced the layers of a vague and building anger underneath. The faint sound of scratching coming from the main chamber didn’t help matters any. She thrust her hands into her pockets and balled her fists, fighting the urge to run in fright, or quite possibly out of disgust for the pity and compassion she had once again heaped upon the wrong person. But as she entered the only room large enough to house him, her anger incrementally softened—Vegeta, the great Ozaru was lying on the floor on his stomach, his short, stubby legs curled and tucked into his bowed stomach, black fur bristled and bushy as it awkwardly poked out from beneath his battle suit, his tail forming a neat loop in the small of his back. He was grunting, muttering something, humming an alien language in baritone that shook the silt beneath her feet, almost throat singing. His elbows were to the floor but occasionally they lifted to reach something before him, something that was lying flat that she could not see. She quietly strolled around to the side, trying to catch of glimpse of whatever it was, being careful to stay within the shadows. He raised the index finger on his right hand and dipped it into a trough. His eyes shifted subtly, pinpointing a very specific spot before bringing his finger to it, coated in red. He smeared and swiped, grumbling, his heavy browline furrowing as his eyes widened and narrowed. “Your presence is disturbing me.” He said as he dipped his finger in the trough again, “Did you think I would not sense your ki?”

“What are you doing?”

Vegeta did not immediately answer. He set his finger down on the surface and moved it in slow, deliberate semi-circles, his eyes tracking the patterns appearing before him as intently as one tracking a moving target. “Did you make it to your comfy bed last night?”

“Yes.” She said, edging closer to the light “Didn’t expect you to be here. I thought you’d be out by the river.” She said, pausing as she stepped a little closer to him. She noticed that his bicep was only a few feet taller than she was, and that the ceiling was further away from the top of his head as he sat upright. “Say, you look . . . smaller.”

“Not small.” Vegeta snorted as he plunged his finger into the trough, forcing the red substance out of the trough and onto the floor.

“Is that blood?”

“T’ch NO it is NOT blood! Why would it—how would I even amass so much blood?? It’s PAINT!”

Bulma looked out over the cleared space. She turned her head and squinted her eyes. She turned her head to the other side and craned her neck around. On the floor before him was a surface made of flattened dry newspapers, covered in broad swipes of red scratches and clumsy smears, incoherent shapes and drips trailing across on side to the other from where the paint has dribbled from the fur around his wrists. “Speaking of paint, we have a problem. That guy Piccolo from the art shop? Something took him.”

Vegeta raised a brow. He gave a subtle sigh and leaned forward, dipping his finger in the trough again. “Not my concern.” Vegeta mumbled as he made another mark on his newspaper canvas.

“What do you mean not your concern?”

“We’re not friends. Our interactions are purely out of mutual necessity.”

“He’s the one who supplies you with this special Namekian paint stuff, right?”

“Of course, who else? I doubt any of the others know how to make it.” He said as he scrutinized the area before him for his next strike, “Namekians are a very secretive people, even among each other. They keep secrets, guard their skills stoically until they pass it down to one of those vile eggs they regurgitate . . . If they failed to train another to make the paint, then that’s on them.”

“Well if there’s no Piccolo, then there’s no ‘Poof’!” Bulma said as she threw her hands up in the air.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The paint doesn’t make me go ‘poof’. I only need the paint to disguise my battle armor, that’s all.”

“Well if there’s no Piccolo then you can’t do that!”

“He is a King.” Vegeta impatiently replied, dotting his finger with authority in the middle of his workspace, “It’s unbecoming of a Prince to rescue other people’s royals, and I’m certainly not going to rob their finest warrior of his chance for glory. He can take care of himself.”

“Wow. That’s not what I’d expect out of someone who owes a debt to an entire race of aliens.” Bulma said, crossing her arms firmly over her chest as she glared up to the giant ape., “that is what this covenant business is about, isn’t it?”

Vegeta tilted his head. He slowed the decent of his finger to the paint until it stopped, paused by the fine ripple in his fur produced by his crawling skin. “I am not their guardian.” Vegeta replied quietly.

“You’ve been their hero.”

“Not a hero.”

“You were a hero to those kids when you saved them from—”

“I AM NOT A HERO! I am not ANYONE’S Hero! I am a SAIYAN!” He said as he suddenly came up on all fours, “I *AM* working off a debt, but I am *NOT* in debt to _him_! And I am NOT working off this debt for some noble purpose so get that out of your puny human skull!”

“Fine. Not a hero. Not a human, a Saiyan. I’ve got that through my head, and now I know I can’t expect anything more out of a Saiyan than I would any other man—you’re all just LAME and WEAK and SELF SERVING!! Have fun with your finger paints, Saiyan coward!” 

Bulma spun around and stomped towards the entrance, a hard pout on her face, her eyes rolling further into the back of her head with every curse word for him that flew through her fiery brain. But as she crossed over into the warehouse antechamber, where torn leather chairs and tarnished wooden desks sat toppled on the checkered floor like dollhouse furniture, something long and thick wrapped around her waist and gently lifted her a few feet off the floor. She gasped as it grew snug, “Wha-what the. PUT ME DOWN!!” 

Vegeta swung his tail until Bulma dangled just beyond his shoulder, “You play a dangerous game with me, woman.”

“No, I’m not playing with you, period!” Bulma spat out, “You just want to lay around here and paint pretty pictures then fine, FINE! I have the radar. I have weapons, a vehicle, I’ll go out and protect YOUR reputation just to keep them from hunting you down and killing you before your time! Because I don’t want to see you spend a single solitary intolerable minute more in the presence of VULGAR humans or WEAK Namekians!! I just want you to POOF yourself and be gone!!”

“My reputation?”

“They think the Vanta Black did this.” Bulma said, wriggling her arms free of his tail just so she could cross them over her chest again, “they think Y O U did it and they are down there calling for your blood!!”

“I—I could care less of what they think!” Vegeta said, turning his head quickly to one side, away from her. 

“Fine. Then put me down. I’ll do the dirty work for you!”

“You . . . I . . . “

“PUT. ME. DOWN.”

Vegeta lowered Bulma to the floor, watching her as she angrily dusted herself off, brushing his stray hairs from her clothes as she stomped back towards the warehouse doors. “DON’T follow me!!” She spat out as she heard the distinctive crunch of four large paws lumbering behind her.

The great ape sank back slightly into the shadows. “I’m not their savior, I’m not their guardian.” He muttered to himself as he listened to the sound of her bike peeling away from the curb, “I’m not some . . . human cuckold. Who does this bitch think she is to order me around?” he said, dragging his knuckles across the litter strewn warehouse floor, spreading pebbles and rocks and pieces of concrete across the face of his still fresh painting. “Of all the nonsense . . . this is nonsense beyond nonsense!” He said out loud, his voice escalating to a shout, “By the kai I won’t have you telling me what to do!!” 

Vegeta leaped out of the hole in the warehouse ceiling. Gingerly, he trotted along the edge of the building, moving in silent, fluid movements from the warehouse to the next building over, and on and on, following behind her bike like the darkest of shadows as she headed towards a place that made his stomach turn, a place that filled his sensitive Ozaru nostrils with the scent of death and fear, a place Frieza had frequently sent him out of either laziness or sadistic, schadenfreude glee to obtain the catch of the day to serve to a race of people who did not eat. _I am a Saiyan, not some human pushover. Stupid earth woman! Stupid earth with all it’s_. . . . Vegeta’s thoughts halted cold in his head as a warm breeze lifted from the sea, carrying with it the scent, the scent that made his grip on the building falter and slip, _She’s going into this place at night she’s either foolish . . . or battle blind. . . how could she . . . why did it have to be HERE????_

The northernmost edge of the city was always dark—even during the day the bright white metal siding of longhouses seemed gray and dingy, the docks and boardwalks all weathered and gray. It was a place Bulma had ever really seen in passing, and not one where she ever wanted to stop. Most seas on earth were either blue or green, warm and inviting, a place of seabirds and sands, but the northmost part of the city was all rocks, seagull shit, and the ever-present smell of rot and decay. She had often noticed from the train or car or plane she was riding in as she passed by this area of town a large building with a tin roof sitting on stilts in the middle of the water, and as luck would have it, this was where the radar was pointing, this was where the entity that had abducted Mr. Piccolo from the art store had gone. She pulled her bike up to a weathered gray post, and as soon as the engine was cut, the foreboding sounds of the northside docks washed in all around her like a tsunami pouring into an urban canyon to drown all the inhabitants in the fury of nature’s rage. The screeches of black and shadowy birds were cheery compared to the groaning wood and the rumble of waves as they licked the underside of the abandoned cannery just ahead. “I have weapons. I have the radar. He doesn’t have anyone else.” Bulma mouthed to herself as she swallowed the lump in her throat and pulled out a hoi poi case full of capsules. She quickly turned her head over her shoulder as she heard a thud, with dogs barking from backyards all over the hillside. “You better not have followed me,” she said, quickly checking the radar, seeing only one very large blip at the end of the long and winding dock before her.

Bulma gripped a gun capsule in her left hand. With her thumb lightly riding the top switch, she started up the dock, wood groaning beneath her feet, announcing her every move. She trotted quickly towards the dilapidated building, pulling the radar from her pocket every so often to check the strength of the blip on the screen. It grew more and more yellow, stronger, bolder, even as the shake in her hands and arms grew more pronounced. The dogs on the hillside behind her were still barking. The sound of the wind whistling between the rotted planks of the cannery walls became more prominent, more foreboding—it moaned and exhaled cold and fishy, and as Bulma reached the wide open door, she found herself closing her eyes and standing a little taller, clutching the gun capsule, her thumb testing the give of the switch. With her eyes still closed she moved forward to cross over into the cannery, only to be met by a wall of supple skin. Vegeta had lowered his palm, forming a wall between Bulma and the cannery. She shrank back slightly as she looked up his hairy arm, remaining silent as he made a shushing gesture with the fingers of his other hand. “That blasted device is correct. There is something here.” He said quietly.

Bulma allowed herself to be scooped up and brought to Vegeta’s shoulder. She looked down at the cannery floor, her fear spiking at the sight of black sea water foaming and churning far below the wide gaps in the planks. She nestled herself a little deeper into the crease between Vegeta’s shoulder and neck. She took the modified dragon radar from her pocket, feeling some sense of reassurance at the yellow blip on the screen, even as the light of it bounced around and made streaks within her poor night vision. “Wait . . . .what is this?” Vegeta said. He lightly cantered forward on his black knuckles. He grabbed hold of one of the four wooden posts that formed a frame around a hole in the cannery floor and climbed up, peering into the loft. There were lights—lights in series of 6, blinking systematically as if charging something. Vegeta subtly swung back and forth and the glint of glass could be seen as light and shadow became disturbed. He reached out to the platform and missed as his curled feet slipped slightly down the pole, forcing a gasp from Bulma as her grip tightened on a tuft of his fur. He reached his arm out again and the smell of rotting fish wafted upwards, triggering him to gag. He turned his head into the crook of his arm then quickly perked up straight and tall as he remembered the earth woman on his shoulder. “there’s . . . something familiar.” He said, hiding a sniffle, “I know what those are.”

“What what is? Vegeta this place is really creeping me out! May-maybe you’re right maybe Piccolo should—”

Vegeta drew back. He swung himself out towards the platform and let go of the pole. He grabbed the lip of the loft with both hands, kicking his short, stubby legs side to side until his left foot could catch the top side of the loft floor. As he moved into the loft Bulma could see a series of large round pods full of liquid, something not of earth, with pipes and tubes and wires reaching into the wall and ceiling like mechanical neurons. She lowered her face to his ear and whispered, “What are these things?”

“Healing pods.”

“Healing pods?” She said, “Let me down. Let me take a closer look.”

Vegeta reached to his shoulder and lowered Bulma to the gray and dusty loft floor. She approached the first pod and wiped the instrument panel of dust with a flat swipe of her hand. The instrument panel illuminated, displaying bright lettering in an alien language, a repeating pattern of lines and triangles, squares and unrecognizable symbols. “This is amazing.” She said as she peered down into the display, “there are layers of displays here, as many layers as an infinity mirror!”

“Gesture down. Then pull the 4th menu up to the top.”

“Oh. Ok.” She replied, patting her hand down slowing on the screen to catch the 4th menu in the panel’s self-created dimension.

“Press your thumb to the inside triangle, then slide it in the same shape. This should illuminate the pod so that we can monitor the ‘patient’, whoever that may be.”

Bulma hooked the edge of her thumb into the triangle, dragging it beeping and blipping to the center of the screen. She made a small triangle and from the bottom center of the pod a weak light appeared, barely glowing in the murky water. 

“Do it again. Larger this time!”

“Ok ok geesh—it’s my first time using one of these things, how would I know how they work?” She said as she hooked her thumb into the triangle again, this time dragging it over the full length and width of the instrument panel in a quick zig zag movement that lit up the pod like a lightbulb, illuminating the rotted, morphed face of a barely recognizable Namekian, trapped in a suspended state of mid-regeneration, the buds of multiple arms poking through its sides and in the center of its abdomen. 

Bulma gave a little cry and fell back as Vegeta’s fur bristled all over. He gnashed his teeth and curled over her as she scooted back on her ass to him. “Wh-what is that?? Vegeta tell me you know what that is!!”

“The other ones – light up the others.”

Bulma looked up to Vegeta in disbelief. She placed her hand on the floor of the loft and pushed herself up on knock knees, heart pounding through the veins of her head and neck, second only in loudness to the sound of her breathing. She stumbled forward to the 2nd panel, quickly wiping it clean of dust and debris to wake the menu and give the gestures. The pod illuminated immediately, forcing an angry barrage of bubbles upward to the top where a small yardrat was floating, eyes closed, its mouth covered by a respirator mask. She felt a pain strike her heart like lightning when the small creature turned, showing a series of malformed multiples still conjoined to its spine mashed together, malformed, each of its faces caught in the stages of terror. In her frozen, stricken state, Bulma nervously bounced her sight eye to eye to eye, feeling fright rip through again fresh as its eyes began to open, sticky and sick, rolling weakly within their sockets as though they could melt and become one with the liquid they were suspended in. She bolted to the next pod and rubbed the surface of the panel like she was scrubbing, lighting it to find that it was empty, and the next empty. 

“Free them! They could recover from whatever abomination this is!” Vegeta hissed as Bulma ran to the 5th pod, mastering the gestures, illuminating the pod to find a stray that was gelatinous, a face melting and oozing into itself. She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying hard not to think of the horrifying look of its translucent flesh. She slapped her hands down to the panel and moved on to the very last pod, keeping her eyes closed, not wanting to see what was inside. “IT’S HIM!!” Vegeta growled, “BULMA MAKE A THROWING GESTURE WITH YOUR FIST! IT’S HIM! IT’S PICCOLO!!”

Bulma opened her eyes and took in a sharp and bracing breath. Piccolo was illuminated before her, floating in the suspension liquid, relatively unchanged compared to the others. She gathered her thoughts and made the gesture, the panel giving a failing sound three times before she got it right. The liquid drained through the tubes. She could hear the liquid woosh out to the sea far below her feet just before Piccolo fell forward and gave a hard THUNK with his head against the glass. He gave his head a barely perceptible shake, laying his large, green, clawed hand against the door.

“OPEN IT! BEFORE HE SUFFOCATES!!”

“OK OK I’M TRYING!!!” She said, throwing all sorts of wild gestures over the panel. Suddenly all six panels began to beep. All at once the pods drained, and the subjects within collapsed.

“To hell with this!!” Vegeta spat out, swinging his mighty fist over the top of the pods, gently smashing each one like eggshells and scooping out people inside. 

Bulma turned her back towards the pods as Vegeta lifted Piccolo out of the chamber and laid him delicately on the floor. She fell to her knees and placed her hand upon the Namekian’s back, stroking as he began to cough and sputter. “Piccolo? Piccolo are you ok??”

Piccolo planted his hands on the floor and slowly pushed himself up. “That . . . thing. It was trying to pick us apart, said it was going to—”

“That ‘thing’ is a Doctor, show a little more respect.” Said a voice from the rafters behind Vegeta, “Dr. Cui, accredited across many galaxies, not just this backwards slushball of water.”

Vegeta spun around the pole towards the voice, “Cui you bastard—I should have known!!”

“Should have, but Saiyans were never a bright people. I’m surprised your monkey brain even let you set foot in here. You always seemed so apprehensive when I’ve seen you at the market on shore and I bet I’m the only one here who knows why hee hee hee.” Cui said as he emerged from the shadows, decked out in a black battle suit similar to Vegeta’s, the color of his dark purple face fluctuating in tune with the shadows of the cannery, “You were never that tough, little Saiyan wimp! Frieza talked such a big game about you but you were always the one we had to patch up at the end of every battle. Such a big baby! Such a little mama’s boy! Whatever did Frieza have to do to pry you from your mother’s tit—”

Vegeta took a swing into the empty air, hitting one of the massive wooden posts with a demolishing smash. 

“and so sensitive too! It was always so much fun to mess with you hee hee hee heeee heee hee!” Cui cackled as he materialized on the loft, his foot positioned just below Piccolo’s head. He reached down and grabbed the Namekian by his purple tunic, lifting him up off the floor, holding his face close to his catfish-like whiskers as they curled and licked the underside of the Namekian’s face, “But there was always something you were exceedingly good at, maybe a little too good by the looks of things. You’ve been stuck that way for days, haven’t you? That’s too bad, really too bad, I hear it’s a rather uncomfortable form to maintain, but you know, these Namekians . . . ha!” he said as he mushed his cheek against Piccolo’s as he cradled his head with his webbed claw, “These Namekians you see, and the Yardrat, yes even them, they can grow big too! See? It’s a common thing across the superior races of the universe, except for this one, he’s trash!! 

Cui flung Piccolo to the cannery floor, hitting his spine against the stub of the busted post before crashing to the floor. Bulma scrambled to the loft’s edge. She peered down to the lower level, looking for any sign of breathing or blood, her eyes only picking up on shades of gray and the black muck of the churning sea as it moved beneath the floorboards. She looked over her shoulder to the young Namekian and Yardrat, who were slowly coming around to consciousness and cowering against the pods. 

“Now then, let me show you what I’ve gleaned from my research!” Cui exclaimed, and the dust on the loft floor began to move in a spiral, whipping around Cui in a tornado-like orb. He hunched his back, his cacophonous laughter morphing into a bellow as his body grew bigger, darker—his purple octopus-like skin growing darker until it was a purplish shade of the sea muck below, leathery yet wet and smooth, face growing broad and thick lipped. His arms shot out from his body long and lean and tentacle like, slapping Vegeta in the face with a sudden, shocking force that sent the great ape reeling backwards off of the pole, but before he could land on the floor, Cui’s tentacles wrapped around his body and hoisted him upwards, curling him in close to the mad doctor’s face. “I supposed you may be surprised at just how powerful I’ve become,” He blubbered with his loose jaws, “It’s amazing what one can accomplish in such little time when left alone. Oh they said ‘he’ll be coming for you! Look out! Watch out for the Vanta Black’ but here it is wrapped up in my arms, ready to POP POP POP Hee Hee Hee heeeee POP goes the monkey or however that obnoxious song goes!” 

Vegeta gritted his teeth as another of Dr Cui’s arms wrapped themselves around his body and tightened. He made a gurgling sound in his throat that blew out into a cry as the arms drew inward like rope on a winch and pulled away from each other as though trying to stretch him out. But just as muffled popping sounds could be heard deep within Vegeta’s body, Dr Cui felt the sting of gunfire hitting him in the head from behind. He turned his face over his shoulder just as Bulma let loose another spray of bullets, exploding into his cheek and eye. “Ballistics?! You’ve gotta be kidding me! Well if you wanted some too, you should have said so!” Cui said as another arm budded from his body and shot out after Bulma, but just as it reached the edge of the loft, Piccolo arose from the floor in giant form, blocking the tentacle with both hands raised to his forehead, palms facing outward, bellowing out “MASENKO HA!”

A sudden flash of light appeared. It shot out from Piccolo’s hand and cut through the flimsy wood of the cannery, collapsing rooms and obliterating most of the roof, sending splinters of wood scattered out into the sea and nearby docks. Almost immediately the part of the cannery that was still standing was flooded with an overwhelming putrid smell that emanated from several very large, round concrete vats tucked away in the far left corner of the structure.

“Oh now you’ve gone and ruined the little surprise I was keeping for Vegeta! No matter—despite the bad timing, I can still make it wor—” But before Cui could finish, Vegeta suddenly burst from the monster’s grip, wasting no time in throwing a punch which Piccolo matched from the other side, but Cui was sharp and fast—he matched each punch thrown with lightning quick blocks from his tentacles, slicing upwards and down, negating the crossfire of punches from Vegeta and Piccolo with ease. The great ape jumped into the air, clasping his hands together, bringing them over his head to crush cui with brute strength, but Cui’s body became gelatinous, his face momentarily dipping into the trunk of his body before popping up again and shooting out its catfish whiskers to sting Vegeta in bright electric pain. “Naughty monkey!” He teased, “Now you’ve earned your surprise for sure!!” he said as he wrapped his tentacle around Vegeta’s neck like a whip, swinging him to the vats and dangling him over them, “LOOK DOWN, MONKEY BOY! LOOK DOWN!” He said as he switched tentacles to dangle the great ape by his knees face down, “LOOK AT IT!!!”

Vegeta looked down into the vats and felt an animal-like fear rip through his body in abject horror. The vats were overflowing with dead fish and worms, squirming, crawling, wriggling through the decaying flesh of the fish who had been so callously abandoned at the closing of the cannery. He pitched himself upward and tried to climb up Cui’s tentacle just to get away, but at the end of Cui’s uproarious laughter, the tentacle unraveled, sending Vegeta hurtling down into the vats.

The great Ozaru quickly sank deep into a vat heaped with decaying fish, the terror in his eyes flashing white with pain as gray and black scales swallowed him whole. “YOU ASSHOLE!!” Bulma spat out as she started up the gun again, running to the left with her finger firmly squeezed into the trigger as Piccolo renewed his fight with Cui from the right, connecting clawed punches with a deadly swiping motion that dug deep into Cui’s flesh. But as the two assailed the fish-like monster it grew even bigger, forming a prominent tail from its back and behind, one that began to flap and flop, slapping Piccolo in the lower legs to sweep him off of his feet. But Piccolo was quick to react—instead of falling to the floor, he threw out his hands and turned his fall into a flip, returning with a right hook that knocked Cui backwards until he was just on the precipice of the hole in the floor. 

Cui swiftly wrapped his tentacles around the post. “Aww and see, I was a little afraid my research would be short sighted! I was saving the other two pods for a human and a Saiyan, you know, just to learn, just to glean from a small round of torture what it is that makes these monkeys so formidable, but once one has a good handle on ichthyology, there’s really no need to—"

All at once the planks of the abandoned cannery began to shake, chattering like loose teeth in an old skull. Bulma gave a gasp, collapsing to her knees with Cui and Piccolo turning to follow her line of sight. From the vats, encased in a bubble of crackling energy, Vegeta emerged like the rising of a black sun, reverted to his humanoid form with only his face and his strangely gloveless hands showing from within the utter blackness of his battle suit. 

“Oh! I appears I’ve scared the ape out of you!” Cui sneered as he formed an energy shield of his own, flushing the black waters of the sea up out of the hole in the floor and all around himself as he grew larger, the final form of his fish features morphing into place.

“A limitation . . . of the animal. A calculated risk we took in residing within.” Vegeta, but not vegeta answered, his terrible voice seeming to chatter the planks of the cannery violently. 

Bulma pushed herself up to standing, her legs wobbling in time to the undulating waves of the floorboards of the loft. She placed her hands on the backs of the Namekian and the yardrat, pushing them to the corner where a wooden set of stairs led to the lower level. 

“Ah, I see. So the great Vanta Black isn’t entirely Vegeta, I should have known. He’d rather be caught dead than contributing to some sort of greater good. Makes total sense now.”

“Hurry we’ve got to get out of here!” Bulma whispered to the still groggy Namkian and Yardrat, her ears picking up on a whimpering sound at the feet of the pods behind her. The gelatinous mass with its melted face and translucent body was making slow, slug-like movements towards the steps, whining and grunting and crying like a lost puppy. “Oh my good kais please tell me that thing isn’t . . . it is, isn’t it?” She said with a gulp as the Namekian and Yardrat both nodded their heads. “You mean, I have to pick it up?” She asked as the two of them nodded their heads more enthusiastically. Bulma bit her lips together. She wiped her sweaty palms on her bibbed overalls, ran over to the blob and pulled, cringing as she felt the suction, tucking it under her arm like a football as the four painstakingly made their way down the steps.

“Verbal communication . . . . is a limitation of the animal as well.” Vegeta replied to Cui, brows furrowing, eyes set, burning with awesome power. He hoisted his arm out before him, palm out, a burgeoning black hole of dark energy gathering in his palm, growing ripe just as Bulma and the aliens made it to the bottom of the stairs. “Provoking the animal emotion marks you as a hinderance. Now . . . now you will simply no longer . . . be.”

“Better destroy my research then!” Cui chimed, shooting his catfish whiskers out with laser speed and accuracy as Bulma and the three aliens huddling around her fell back against the stairs. Out of the terror of impending death, Bulma cried out Vegeta’s name, shrieking just as the blast of dark energy left his palm, the size and velocity of it set to hit not only Cui but also Piccolo, who had no direction in which to retreat. Between the hurtling whisker and the blast, Bulma had only time to see Vegeta turn his head, his eyes touching upon her, his expression softening subtly as though he had only just recognized who she was, before the cannery, the air, the aliens, the punches, the water, the dark ball of energy, everything around her paused . . . and then suddenly disappeared!

“Wha—what happened?!”

“Hi! My name is MarQipelligrIlippo but you can just call me Mark!” 

Bulma switched her head all around herself. The Namekian, the young yardrat, herself and the gelatinous blob were all four suddenly in the printing warehouse!

“What the—WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!”

“Oh ! Well I . . . . I sensed that you were in danger so . . . I used instant transmission to take you back to the last place you felt safe! Kind of a weird place to feel safe at if you ask me—”

“I’M NOT FUCKING ASKING YOU ANYTHING YOU NEED TO SEND ME BACK TO WHERE I WAS!!!”

“Oh! Oh well I mean, I can do that but . . . it’s gonna take me a minute, you see I—”

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!?”

“Oh! I’m MarQipelligrIlippo, and I—”

“YOU SAID THAT ALREADY I MEAN WHY THE HELL DID YOU JUST RANDOMLY RESCUE ME WHEN I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE?!”

“Oh! Oh but, I mean, you kind of know who I am. Remember when Frieza—I mean, emperor Frieza—”

“GET ME BACK TO VEGETA NOW!!!!”

“Oh! Ok! Them too?”

“NO!!!!! JUST LISTEN TO ME!” she shouted as she grabbed the alien by the vest, “I NEED TO GET BACK TO HIM RIGHT NOW BEFORE HE DOES SOMETHING STUPID!!!”

“Ah! Ok! Now?”

“N O W !!!!”

“Ok here goes!”

In a flash, Bulma and the Yardrat were back in the loft of the cannery, where Piccolo, Cui and great ape Vegeta were frozen at the height of their battle. Time started again, and Cui dived in and out of the hole in the floor, alternately slapping his two assailants with his tail and tentacles. The great ape struck out his hand and pulled the great fish by its whiskers back into himself. “Piccolo! Deliver the killing blow!!!”

“M A S E N K O HAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” Piccolo shouted as Vegeta hurtled Cui into the air like a clay pigeon, the full force of the blast hitting the monster fish dead on, disintegrating the evil of Dr. Cui in a bright beam of brilliant light. 

“YOU are not going anywhere after this is all over—if you want to make this up to me, you’re going to stick around.” Bulma growled at the cowering yardrat as they stood at the edge of the crowd of Namekian people as they gathered around Piccolo in the street just outside the half-demolished art shop.

“Hail Piccolo! King of the Dragon Clan!” cried a voice somewhere within the crowd as fists went up, echoing Piccolo’s name in a chant.”

“The threat has been eliminated, our heritage is safe. But I couldn’t have done it without his help.” Piccolo said in his distinctive Baritone voice as green faces turned over their shoulders to the great ape sulking in the shadows. But instead of smiles, the adult expressions wore a look of suspicion and indifference, of an old and low lying anger that could not be dispelled by a good deed of one.

But Dende and the other children were not bound to this shared, generational hatred. They rushed out towards Vegeta with smiles and laughter with Dende leading the pack with his arms outstretched. “See! We knew it! We knew it wasn’t you that attacked our art store!” He said with a cheery smile, “You’re one of the good guys, huh?”

Vegeta turned his shaggy head and gently smacked Dende’s hand to the side, “DON’T get carried away!” He snarled.

“Hey! Dende! Leave him alone! Don’t touch him! He’s filth!” Shouted one of the Elders.

The children gave a collective whine. They looked up to the great ape with downcast antennas, the sleeves of their heavy robes drooping as they looked up to him with sadness in their eyes. 

“Bunch of softies . . . what nonsense.” Vegeta grumbled, turning away to stroll into the shadows. 

“Vegeta? Vegeta--?” Bulma said as she followed a few steps behind, “So what you’re just gonna leave??”

“It's not as though you don't know where to find me.” The great ape snorted as he slowly lumbered away. 

“Well umm, great job everybody.” Bulma said as she nodded to the rescued Namekian and Yardrat, her eyes falling pitifully on the gelatinous blob, “I-I’m really sorry you never reverted back to . . . to whatever form you were supposed to be in.”

“This is my form.” The blob replied.

“Oh.” Bulma said as her face lit up bright red, “Sorry.”

The blob gave a humph and sloughed off slowly down the sidewalk.

“And as for you,” Bulma said, pulling Mark the Yardrat towards the art store, “you’re coming with me.”

“Oh. Ok. Yeah it seems like it ha ha!” Mark replied as she pulled him through the crowd up to the front art store stoop where Piccolo was standing and chatting with the other Namekians. “Hey Piccolo,” Bulma said, carefully interjecting herself between Piccolo and the others, “Can I have a word with you in private?”

Piccolo nodded his head in silent consent. He gave a final salute and retreated into the remains of the store with Bulma and Mark, closing the door despite the open wall. 

“First of all,” Bulma said as she let go of Mark, “What the hell did I miss while I was gone? Vegeta was in his human-like form before I got transported, then when I got back, he was an Ape again. How did he turn back? Why?”

“How should I know? One moment I was bracing myself for impact from that damn dark energy ball, the next Vegeta is mid-transformation—the energy ball didn’t even hit! He pulled it back somehow, and let that damn Cui go wild on me while he just floated there doing nothing!”

“I am so confused,” Bulma said, cradling her forehead with her palm, “If he had control over it, why on earth would he stay in great ape form? I mean, he complains about it constantly.”

“What makes you think he has control over it?”

“Because he did the same thing when we confronted Goku—he changed back to his humanoid form and then . . . . somewhere along the line he lost it and blew right back up to great ape size.”

“I see. Now things are starting to make some sense—PUT THAT DOWN!.” Piccolo roared as Mark suddenly righted himself from picking tubes of oil paints up off of the floor and stuffing them into his pockets. 

“Sense? How does that make sense? Piccolo if you have any insight into this you’ve got to let me know. Is he just lying to me about being stuck in that form?”

“He’s not lying, he’s just not being entirely truthful.”

Bulma slowly shook her head, “About what?”

“When the Vanta Black entity made its choice to occupy Vegeta, it didn’t choose an Ozaru, it chose a Saiyan.”

“Ok, so?”

“So what I’m saying is . . . perhaps there’s more of the real Vegeta in the great ape than there is in the Saiyan. For all his grouching and complaining of being stuck in that form, the truth is, he probably feels more like himself than he has in years. I imagine having a living, acting void within one’s self takes its toll, even on someone as stubborn and prideful as Vegeta.”

“Oh.” Bulma replied, swallowing the lump in her throat, trying hard not to think of the look in Vegeta’s eyes just before she was whisked away by instant transmission, “So . . . maybe he wanted the victory for himself.”

“Not exactly. Just before Vegeta transformed, I sensed something, something unusual something . . . surprising. I’m used to sensing Vegeta’s pride--This was not pride. This was a wellspring of pure Saiyan rage, something the void could never produce, something that no doubt sets him at odds with the great and terrible power that he carries within himself. Something in that moment provoked the real him and allowed him to overcome the darkness that he acts as a vessel for. . . some strong emotion, some fundamental ‘thing’ that not even the void could swallow, and when it awakened, it wrought a terrible savagery upon Cui, one where the death blow I delivered was little more than symbolic. I should feel ashamed of myself for taking as much credit as I did, but my people hate with a passion that is just as intense, and I could not let them believe that their monster was indeed my ally.” 

“I . . . understand. I’ve heard of what he’s done to your people.”

“He will pay the price, that much is certain. He and I are not at peace, but I am content to let him hurtle himself through to his final days.”

“I see.” Bulma said, taking a deep breath in, “So listen, I need talk to you both about something that I really hope you can help me with.” She said, addressing both Piccolo and Mark, “What do you guys know about stopping time?”

“Stopping time?”

“You know, like a pause,” She said, “We encountered a creature that could stop time temporarily, like, within the space of a held breath, and I’ve noticed just from doing instant transmission that there seems to be some sort of hitch in time in between the point of origin and the destination when doing instant transmission. I know the artifact Vegeta uses can bend space, and that’s its filled with some sort of substance that Vegeta referred to as either Yardrat or Namekian ‘magic’, so it makes sense to me that maybe that same substance can be used to . . . . well um, is that substance still around? Like is it here? On earth?”

“Oh yeah we Yardrat got plenty of it but errr ummmm . . . . it’s kind of reserved for sacred uses and all. If you want any of it, I gotta use certain skills to get it, you know what I’m sayin?” Mark said as he pushed a tube of the oil paints into his pocket with his thumb. 

“Gotta even the playing field somehow. Make it happen and we’ll consider your debt repaid.”

It did not take Mark long to employ his thievery. 

But something in the air felt heavy and thick to Bulma as she made her way home--heavy and endless, as though she were traversing a never ending expanse of nothingness, in a time where it was most dark, and the light was just threatening to intrude. Over and over the same scene played behind Bulma’s eyes, the same words repeated themselves in her ears. She held her hand over the bounty in her pocket as though it were a living creature—a tiny silver vial, a black and powerful substance, something not of the world she lived in, a connection to him, an intimate connection, with importance no one else could understand . . .

And when she returned to her warm and cozy bed, Yamcha was in it. 

Silently, she unbuckled her bibs. 

She wrapped the vial up in them and tucked them away in a shoebox in the closet. 

She dipped her bare legs and feet into the cotton sheets, laying down behind him as he slept on his side, sliding her hands up his chest, mashing her face into his back to stop the odd flow of tears that seemed to well up out of nowhere. 

Yamcha turned over to face her while still half asleep. “Oh hey babe, I waited for yo—” but before Yamcha could finish his sentence, Bulma stuck her face into his for a kiss, probing his mouth, coaxing him to a deeper kiss with her tongue. “Woah babe what are you doin’, its 4 in the morning.” Yamcha said as she climbed on top of him and pulled off his shirt, “I didn’t get in till late, man. Let me sleep.”

Yamcha turned beneath Bulma’s lap, returning to sleep on the original side he was sleeping on. And without fully understanding why, the tears once again began to flow, stronger this time, her lower lip and chin quivering as the man beneath her returned to his peaceful, rhythmic snore. 

. . . and still the scene replayed in her head. With the same. inescapable. feeling. 


	18. Bulma's Dark Invention - Showdown with Jeuice and Burter!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bulma invents a device to help even the score, but its use comes with a heavy price. 
> 
> \---------------  
> I always get to a point when I'm writing long works like this where it seems like I'm getting slower and slower at writing chapters, and I only hope that doesn't translate into the reader having a harder time getting through them. It's winter and everything is frozen here, so I'm blaming my slow progress on the weather. I had a lot of fun writing this chapter, especially the character of Jeuice, who I strongly modeled after a celebrity who left us last year. if you want a VERY OBVIOUS hint of WHO that might be, follow me on IndulgentVegFandom on Tumblr and I'll give you a clue in the post for this chapter :) otherwise, hope you enjoy! 
> 
> \----

18.

The next morning, Bulma made the decision not to see Vegeta for at least a week.

She instead focused on trying to return to the normal rhythm of life—washing and cleaning, reading science magazines and exploring new concepts in technology and engineering, running errands, buying chips and drinks, avoiding the clouds of mountain herb smoke in the house as she and Yamcha maintained an unspoken treaty to live and let live, apart yet under the same roof. And yet at times, when she would relax into the couch or when she would slowly slump down over with her head bobbing precariously over her newest invention, she felt an odd longing deep within herself for the smell and feel of black fur. 

But the urge to put to use the dark matter Mark had stolen for her was somehow just as strong, and no matter how much Bulma attempted to focus on the mundane, her thoughts were always with the little tweaks, rerouting, rewiring, redesign, playing like a slowly unfolding, ever-present movie in the back of her head so that when she returned to her work bench it was as though she had never really left--she jumped right back into touching up circuits and gazing deep into the liquid hypnotic depths of the dark matter as it lazily swirled inside the fortified chamber she had fashioned for it. It seemed so strangely calm, darkly iridescent like a peacock moving quietly unseen in the night, eluding her predatory, scientist eyes as they searched for the answers that this long sought out substance could provide. Negative gravity, a force presenting drag to the quickly expanding universe, ever abundant, beyond human grasp yet easily obtained by the silly and aloof Yardrat, enclosed in a shallow, kidney shaped titanium dish repurposed from a machine that had failed miserably before Goku’s product review board. The young man with piercing blue eyes in the capsule corp pharmacy . . . the darkness beneath Vegeta’s skin . . . a dark cloud terrorizing Marijuku . . . the harsh glower of her friend Goku’s face in the office before work was no more. Bulma closed the chamber. It was time for a test.

“Alright Bulma, this is either going to work or it’s going to blow up in my hand.” She said to herself, feeling the blood rush through the veins of her neck and arms. She placed a large digital clock with a red readout counting seconds and microseconds on the workbench and walked backwards away from it to the far end of the garage. She set the distributor to .05 on the device and readied herself against the back wall of the garage. “Here goes nothing.”

Bulma ran towards the clock and pressed the button on her device. the boundaries of the things around her blurred, vibrating violently as though all the little atoms that held them together had subtly separated from one another. The readout on the clock went wild and distorted. Bulma’s run stopped . . . . The clock stopped . . . The dust falling from the lights stopped . . . the movement of her hair, the freshness of her eyes the position of the saliva in her mouth all stopped . . . until her left foot came safely down to a solid concrete floor in a space beyond what she previously occupied. She looked over her shoulder and saw an outline of herself—thin and nearly invisible—in the vibrating wave that was holding static behind her. She approached her workbench and slowly waved her hand under the lamp, but no shadow was cast on her desk. “Speed of light,” she murmured to herself, “it’s already there, so . . . it occupies . . . yet it doesn’t occupy . . . “ She reached her hand to the switch and turned the light off, but the bulb remained illuminated. She tapped the stopper on the clock, but still the figures on its face remained the same. She trotted to her computer and typed a large amount of nonsense words onto her notepad, but nothing new was displayed. “Ok. This is odd. Aaanndd if I release—” She said, clicking the button on the device again, releasing the crest of time from its stasis to wash over the garage in a wave that shook the tools and the lights, knocking both she and Krillin off of their feet as he came through the garage door at exactly the wrong time.

“GAGH what the hell was that?!”

“Krillin?! What are you doing here??”

Krillin rubbed the side of his bald head and sat up scowling, the elbow of his other arm propped up on his knee. “Well, I’ll get to that but first I gotta know, are you in here making illegal weapons?! Pretty sure that shook more than just this house!”

“No!” Bulma said with a huff as she jumped quickly up to her feet, “It’s just a thing, that’s all. Kinda hard to keep occupied these days when there’s no work to go to, you know?”

“Speak for yourself. I have work to do, and unfortunately it’s part of the reason why I’m here.”

“Oh god, the ticket.” Bulma moaned, plowing her fingers through her blue wavy hair and scrunching it in her fist before sinking into the stool at her garage workbench. 

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I know we’re friends and all and that we go way back, but . . . “

“I know. You’ve got a job to do.” Bulma said, burying her face in her hands.

“Yeah. Ain’t being grown up grand?”

“Psh . . . every day of it sucks.” Bulma said with a sigh. She kicked her legs out and balanced her feet on the heels of her red, tattered sneakers before using them to pull herself to the mini fridge in the corner, “I know the answer is probably no if you’re on duty, but . . . you want a beer?”

Krillin tipped his policeman’s cap, betraying the rows of moxibustion marks on his smooth, round forehead. He gave a coy smile and turned his hand palm side up, which was quickly filled by the cheap white-label beer via a perfectly aimed toss from Bulma. “Not on duty. My shift was up an hour ago.” He said as he opened the can with a noisy *splosh*

“I know I’m just whining at this point, but I miss the old days so, so much. I never thought adulthood was going to be like this, it’s just so . . . disappointing.”

“Waddayamean?”

“I dunno, I expected more out of it, I guess. Remember all those crazy adventures we went on when we were kids?” She said, leaning back with her elbows on the workbench, beer swinging pendulously from her fingertips, “Remember that first Tenkaichi tournament? You and Goku were just kids . . . that one lady who stripped down to her bra and underwear to win against that religious guy? Remember that guy with stinky ball hands that tried to kill you with his B.O.??”

“Psh, don’t remind me.” Krillin said as he took a long draught from the ice cold beer.

“I really thought Yamcha was going to win the whole thing.” She said more into the empty space before her eyes than she did to Krillin, “I really thought Capsule Corp was going to be my job forever and now . . . now I’m just putting all of Goku’s calls on ignore.”

“You could find all the dragon balls and put Capsule Corp together again,” Krillin said with a suppressed belch rumbling deep within his small body, ”Install yourself as CEO and call all the shots.”

“Psh, no—no one would ever believe I could run a multibillion dollar company. Can’t even balance a household budget enough to pay a two hundred dollar ticket for Kai’s sake.” 

“But you think a goofy kid like Goku can??”

“He did it somehow!” she said with a sad shrug of her shoulders, “Whatever happened on Namek, you know . . . “

“Well look I’m being serious! Maybe, you know, if a couple of us worked together to find the dragon balls—"

“No, I—please. I don’t . . . I don’t even wanna talk about it, ok?” She said, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, the beer dipping precariously to the floor, “It just . . . doesn’t do the thing for me anymore, ok?”

“Well, ok.” Krillin replied quizzically.

“So what do I have to do about this ticket? What can I do if I don’t have two hundred bucks?”

“Well, about that . . . “ Krillin said, crossing his arms so that his biceps popped out of his short uniform sleeves, “Are you still hangin’ around that giant ape?”

“Yes, kind of. Why what’s up?”

“I have an unusual case that I think might take an unusual ally to crack. You know how some of the people in Marijuku are neither Yardrat or Namekian? Well I think there may be an alien among them that’s swiping cars off the street. We’ve had a string of vehicle thefts here lately over the last couple of weeks, and in each case the vehicle was parallel parked and the capsule to it still with its owner. We thought perhaps someone had some sort of master capsule that they were using to transform and steal these cars, but . . . “ Krillin said, coming up from his leaning position on the wall, approaching Bulma to show her a video on his phone, “Looks like it’s this guy.”

Bulma took Krillin’s phone in her hand and peered into the screen, her brow furrowed as she watched the grainy recording of a beautiful, bright red lacquered sports car being lifted into the air by an alien who was every bit of 8ft tall. He had a thick neck and small head, purple bumpy skin, ears like Frieza’s but battle armor similar to Vegeta’s. “He’s just picking cars up . . . with brute strength?”

Krillin closed his eyes and gave a nod of his head. “And he’s not acting alone. He picks them up out of the parking space, then his little orange buddy here hot wires them and drives them away. See? Look—” He said, tapping his pudgy finger on the screen to the near end of the video where the alien was joined by another, much shorter being with bright orange skin and platinum white hair that jutted from his head in two spiky waves to either side, the rest of his hair pulled tight against the center of his skull and bundled in a tight, bluntly cut pony tail with locks at various lengths in the back. He waved a device over the door of the car then slipped inside, driving off, leaving the purple alien to follow with flailing arms behind him. 

“They seem bright,” Bulma said sarcastically as she handed Krillin his phone, “So what do you want Vegeta to do? You want him to go up against these guys?”

Krillin hesitated. He reached his hand behind his head and capitulated between averting his eyes and staring deep into Bulma’s. He swirled the beer around in the can and swallowed the lump in his throat before speaking again, “You know, I understand I’m . . . . short--people use it as a reason to dismiss me all the time. It’s always been that way, you know, I get it, I accept it. The guys in my unit, they’ve seen what I can do in terms of fighting style and strength, but . . . they still don’t take me seriously in kind of the same way girls don’t take me seriously.” He said as Bulma swiveled thoughtfully on her stool, “I need . . . I need a breakthrough case, something big. They’ve known about these guys for months—we know their names, we know where they set up shop—but there’s just so much that we don’t know about these other aliens that nobody on the team has really found the guts to try to bring them in.”

“But . . . If Vegeta cooperates . . .”

“Exactly. But the question is, would he?” Krillin said as Bulma stood up from the stool and paced around the room, “I can’t pay him anything but--.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about compensation, Krillin. Really, he doesn’t care about that. The question is whether or not these two aliens are part of his ‘agenda’ “ Bulma said as she made finger quotes in the air, “He’s a pretty singularly minded dude.”

“Would he be willing to do it if I dismissed your ticket?”

“I—no, I mean . . .” Bulma said as the image of Vegeta’s stare flashed through her mind, “he makes it very, very clear to me that he doesn't care, and he wouldn’t do it JUST for me. I’ll speak to him but I can’t make any promises.”

“Try.” Krillin said as he passed in the garage door, turning his face over his shoulder with a tired but kindly smile, “And uhh, maybe while you’re at it, speak to some of the girls at Capsule Corp for me too? Please?”

_Now . . . what is he doing at Frieza’s?_ Bulma thought to herself as she glanced down at the modified dragon radar in her hand, her other hand tilting the acceleration forward until the lights of Marijuku flew swift and fluid over the shiny paint of her bike.

She entered Frieza’s with her eyes locked with the small white and purple alien behind the counter, whose slight smile grew more and more wicked as she approached. “Why, Miss Bulma Briefs, are you certain you yourself are not a Saiyan? You seem to have an uncanny knack for detecting power levels.”

“Can it Frieza. Where is he?”

“Well he’s certainly not in the kitchen considering he’s the size of a house.” Frieza said, growling out the end of his sentence as he crossed his arms hard over his chest, “He’s doing his job. That’s all you need concern yourself ab—HEY!” Frieza shrieked as Bulma walked behind the counter and walked through the door to the kitchen, “HOW DARE YOU! THIS IS EMPLOYEES ONLY!!!

Bulma casually strolled through the kitchen, being careful to keep her footing on the greasy floor. She peeked all around the shiny pots and pans hanging from the racks, craning her neck to peer around the corner to the dishwasher’s station, finding it empty except for several tubs stacked from floor to cabinets full of dirty used teacups and coffee mugs stained with dribbles and rings and tongues of liganoon tea, the occasional roach scaling the pile with antennas twitching. Suddenly the backdoor swung open with Vegeta’s black, hair arm reaching inside. He felt around the inside wall until his fingers could find the tubs, then very gingerly took the tub off the top and pulled it back into the alley with him. 

“HAVE YOU NOT HEARD A SINGLE WORD I’VE SAID!! THIS IS MY KITCHEN AND MY ESTABLISHMENT AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE HERE!!” Frieza shrieked as Bulma followed Vegeta’s arm through the backdoor, finding him behind a makeshift table, carefully dipping dishes pinched delicately between his thumb and forefinger into a tub of soapy water, suds crackling in the fur on the back of his fingers before dipping them in a 2nd tub of rinse water.

“Vegeta, hey!” Bulma said, taking a step back, her eyes fighting to see his black outline in the blue brick light, “You’re . . . smaller!”

Vegeta’s eyes narrowed to a hiss. His fur bristled, his ears flexed. He turned his head the way she had seen him do a dozen times when uttering his typical “T’ch” but no sound came out. He instead remained tight lipped and silent, his features seeming to hold a seething anger behind his stony face. 

“You really are the size of a house . . . a small house.”

“Not. Small.” Vegeta muttered as he noisily picked another dish from the tub.

“I didn’t mean it like an insult!” Bulma said, looking over her shoulder, speaking quickly as Frieza burst through the door, “I’ve got a hot lead on someone I think might be on your list and—"

“NO!” Freiza said, cutting between Bulma and Vegeta with his arms out to either side, “IF YOU’RE PLANNING ON TRAPSING OUT AT ALL HOURS YET AGAIN TONIGHT, THE ANSWER IS NO! I JUST FOUND A WAY TO GET MY KITCHEN MONKEY BACK AND I’M NOT LETTING YOU ABSCOND WITH HIM AGAIN!!!” 

“You mean to tell me you’re having him wash your dishes OUTSIDE near the dumpsters just to avoid doing it yourself? Really??!” Bulma said, bending over slightly to thrust her face into Frieza’s, her fists planted hard into her hips.

“It’s NOT MY JOB!” Frieza said, pressing his tail to the ground so that he could stand on his tippy toes, “Who are you to bust down my door and tell ME how to run MY business??”

“So what you just let your dishes pile up for a week because you refuse to get your hands dirty??” Bulma said, pushing herself a little closer into the space between she and Frieza as Vegeta continued to dip dishes behind them, “You treat him like he’s your slave!!”

“WELL AS A MATTER OF FA—”

Vegeta lowered his massive hand between Bulma and Frieza, scooting Frieza backwards slightly, his red eyes narrowing just before giving a barely perceptible shake of his head. “Not a slave per se . . .” Frieza hissed as soon as Vegeta removed his hand, “You fundamentally do NOT understand the relationship between Vegeta and I, so DON’T make assumptions of how things should work. You humans have your way of doing things, the rest of us have ours. It doesn’t need your interjection or interference!” 

“Vegeta has a mission to fulfill.” Bulma said, looking up, her eyes barely touching upon his before he quickly ducked them away.

“He has a mission here. At this restaurant. And YOU’VE BEEN KEEPING HIM FROM IT!!!”

Bulma stepped closer to the washtubs, curling her fingers around their metal edges as she positioned herself just below Vegeta’s face, “Does the name Jeuice mean anything to you? Is he on the list?”

Vegeta paused, soapy plate hoisted mid air, suds running down his furry arm until they dripped down his elbow. He tilted his head and ground his teeth together behind his tightly closed lips. 

“What part of NO don’t you understand??” Frieza said, his tail roiling violently before slapping down to the ground, “Can’t you see he has chores??”

“If we’re going to do this we HAVE to do it tonight! These stupid chores could have been done already if you’d just PAY someone to do it!!”

“Oh is that all?” Frieza replied with exaggerated sarcasm, “oh just pay them a little money—spoken like a true human! How convenient of you to forget there’s a little wage gap between you hairless simians and the rest of us! Most of us barely have the money to survive!”

Vegeta squeezed the plate between his fingers until it started to crack.

“Right like I’m just DRIPPING with money on account of being human! I haven’t worked in a week! I’ll probably NEVER work in this town again after what happened downtown!”

The great Ozaru gave an exasperated sigh. “Where is this . . . Jeuice?”

Frieza and Bulma glanced up to the giant ape before quickly locking eyes again. “Down where the elevated trains meet.”

“No place you need concern yourself about because you’re NOT. GOING. Not with HER or anybody else, but most especially NOT. HER!!!”

“With as many dishes as he’s done already I’m sure you have more than enough barely not filthy plates to serve the four whole customers you’ll have for the week!!”

Vegeta squeezed the plate a little more until it disintegrated around the pads of his two fingers, the few remaining intact pieces falling to the dishwater with plops that were barely audible over the sound of Bulma and Frieza’s escalated bickering. He gave an annoyed growl that was heard by no one but himself, then strolled forward on all fours towards the street, lumbering casually out into the open where the Namekian children followed cautiously behind him with giggles and wows and Namekian adults scrambled away in fear. They followed him to the place where the streets grew dark, their numbers forming a little crowd at the border of light and dark that Bulma came gently running through to chase after him. “Hey—HEY!” she called, picking up the pace as his hindquarters cleared the next block up, “Vegeta!!” She yelled, catching up to him only after he paused for a crossing truck, “Damnit what is wrong with you?”

But Vegeta did not answer. He waited for the truck to pass safely through the intersection, then continued on up the dark corridor at an unhurried pace. 

“Look I’m sorry I haven’t spoke to you in a couple of days, I . . . I just had some things I really needed to catch up on. I-I-I’ve been working on something that I think would really help us if . . . Hey Vegeta slow down I can’t . . . “ 

Bulma steeled herself up inside as she began to lose ground. She made a sudden sprint and jumped up to the fur just below Vegeta’s elbow, clinging and climbing clumsily until his noticeably smaller hand wrapped around her body, but instead of bringing her to his back or shoulder, Vegeta gently set her on the ground and uttered the word “Walk” in a firm, commanding voice.

“Wow.” Bulma replied in a meanly sarcastic tone, but despite her pouty face and crossed arms, the Ozaru continued, padding up the increasingly darker streets as Bulma stood in the place where she was set down and seethed. She reached into her jacket pocket and grabbed her hoi poi case, selecting her bike capsule and jumping on it as soon as the bike deployed. She zipped up next to his left forearm, revving her motor loud enough to catch his attention. The great Ozaru tilted his head, looking down at her as though she were nothing more than an annoyance. “You wanna find Jeuice tough guy? Then you better keep up with me!” She shouted up to Vegeta, tilting the accelerator of her bike full throttle down the street. 

The bike gave an angry, mechanical roar. It blasted along the double yellow lines on the road so hard that Bulma imagined it splitting open on two sides like a zipper. She looked over her shoulder and saw the Ozaru growing smaller in the distance at first, stubbornly sticking to the same unhurried meandering gait until the distance between them spurred him to canter after her. She pushed the bike to it’s max and the Ozaru hurried his pace to a gallop, leaping to the sides and rooftops of office buildings as they entered the cluttered concrete forest of downtown. She ducked her head down behind the tiny windshield of her bike to make herself sleeker and plotted a circuitous path to the elevated track, making a game of losing him in the twists and turns, her heart secretly delighted each time he saw through her playful deception. “You’re following me by sound, aren’t you?” She said to herself as she spied Vegeta leaping between rooftops, “Let’s make this a little more challenging!”

With a wave of her hand, Bulma switched the bike from combustion to silent electric power. She made a hard right turn away from the direction of the elevated tracks and entered the well manicured park at the city’s center that led up to the injured and broken Capsule Corp building, intending to draw him out into the open. She nestled herself under a canopy of flowering cherry trees, a flurry of pink and purple and white petals blasting up from her wheels as she went deeper into the grove. She slowed the bike where the cherry tree’s branches thatched together like the embrace of old friends, smiling to herself as she thought of lunchbreaks spent alone, wandering the woods, tinged with sadness, a petty, silly sadness, the ever present echo, the sound of her father’s voice, a promise that was not kept, that could not be kept, through no fault of his own-- _I want_ _this to be yours someday, Bulma._

Bulma closed her eyes and shook her head. She sat up from the bike and crossed her arms to rub her hands over her shoulders, feeling a sudden chill run through her body. She scanned the scenery beyond the cherry forest and found herself gazing upon the Capsule Corp building in the distance, the broken double C, the shine of the windows marred by a dull black gap where the lab used to be. She raised her eyes upward, peering through pink clouds of cherry blooms against the blue-black sky before bringing them down to the skyline, searching for his shadow, feeling an odd rise of subtle anger inside as she thought of his sudden transformation, his wild rage, how he had thrown Capsule equipment to the street, how he had lost the pills, how he ran back to Frieza at the first opportunity he received, _that stare_. She relaxed down into the seat of the bike and reached for the accelerator, pausing as a small shower of white petals rained down on her arm. She turned her face over her shoulder and was startled to see Vegeta standing there, his silent scowl softened slightly by puzzlement. “I-I took a wrong turn.” She said sheepishly as she busied herself with a text message to Krillin, “C’mon let’s go.” 

Even at such a late hour, the many shops built under and into the elevated tracks just west of downtown bustled as though drawing secondary energy from trains moving overhead. Red electronic lanterns with bold lettering like those of the Marijuku district lured visitors from the street deep into the high arches of the railway. Graffiti and sagging linen posters dotted an otherwise strained and sometimes crumbling brick façade. A clutter of bicycles gathered in certain spots where pubs and shitty apartments met, tethered to street signs by dog chains and padlocks, the smell of spices and motor oil mingling. “This must be the place.” Bulma mumbled as she peered out from across the way, Krillin said it’s where the arches turn blue and green. Do you see anything like—hey!” She said as Vegeta began to stroll away. Bulma dismounted from the bike and pressed the double C symbol on the tank to make it revert to Capsule form, sliding it back into the hoi poi case before jogging up to join him. It was then that she became aware of all the eyes staring in their direction, of shop owners on smoke breaks dashing back into their restaurants and boutiques, some of them quickly producing their phones from their pockets to take pictures or video of the giant ape. Bulma swallowed the lump in her throat and drew closer to him, “Do you think this is wise, being out in the open like this?”

The great Ozaru did not answer, not even so much as a T’ch or a grunt. Bulma kept herself behind his forearm, shielding herself from the cameras and video as she walked beside him on the outside of the street. They came to a fruit cart where a man was smiling and joking with the two other men with him. “Monkey want a banana?” He laughed, offering Vegeta a bright yellow banana full of brown and black spots. 

“Fool.” Vegeta spat out as he slapped the banana out of the man’s hand, scattering the screaming humans like gnats.

“Hey cool it! We’re already drawing enough attention as it is!” Bulma hissed, his only reply a judgmental raise of his eyebrow and a sneer, “Not talking to me, huh? That’s fine. Let’s just do what we came here to do and you can get back to being on the end of Frieza’s leash.” She said, boldly stepping ahead of him at a pace that was hard for her to maintain. “Krillin also said we may have to cross through the tunnel to the next street over to reach this chop shop they’re running, and that it won’t have any number or any other distinguishing marks on it. Not sure how the hell we’re supposed to find—” She said, stopping as Vegeta suddenly hopped up to the top of the elevated tracks. “Guess . . . you wanted to get started. That’s fine. Looks perfectly safe around here.” She said as she entered a dingy concourse that was littered with outdoor refrigerators and plastic buckets, drunk men muttering to themselves as they laid against the wall, cursing an enemy unseen, their eyes following Bulma like dogs too tired to hunt rabbits, a hunger in their eyes as they traced the soft curves of her hair, saliva dripping from their mouths as their unsolicited gaze dropped lower to touch upon the protruding parts of her feminine body _. Krillin please tell me you are nearby_ she quickly typed before thrusting her hands phone and all back into her jacket pocket. 

“Psst, Bulma!” Krillin called out from a nearby nook, motioning her over with his hand. Bulma looked both ways up and down the street and trotted over to the small indentation in the wall. “Where’s Vegeta? Is he with you?”

“He’s around.” She said with a sigh, “What about Jeuice and this other guy? Are they in there somewhere?”

“Well, about that heh heh,” Krillin said as he rubbed the back of his head with his hand, “My other contact has been scouting around for them tonight. He should be joining us any minute.”

“Other contact?” She said as Piccolo swiftly materialized behind them, against the cubby wall.

“No luck. We’re going to have to resort to plan B.”

“Piccolo! Wha—”

“I have a personal beef with these morons—they’ve stolen cars from my customers twice. We Namekians don’t procure vehicle capsules quite as easily as humans do.” Piccolo said, crossing his arms, “And though it’s beside the point, I don’t want to be in debt to Vegeta either.” Piccolo murmured, “I went to the police but they told me they couldn’t do anything about it, that’s how I met up with Officer Krillin.”

“Ok but . . . Plan B? What’s plan b?”

Krillin and Piccolo turned to Bulma with a shared, apologetic look.

Bulma gave her head a slow shake, “What?”

“Do you have a vehicle capsule on you?” asked Piccolo, struggling to keep his baritone voice low.

“Well yeah I . . . I have my bike in . . . oh no. A-Are you . . . . you’re going to use me as bait, aren’t you?”

“They are heading back this way.” Piccolo said, “Can you make it appear as though your bike had a mechanical malfunction?”

“Well, yeah, I mean . . . You mean you want me to go in there, alone, by myself, with—you know what, ok, FINE.” She said as she abruptly walked away from Piccolo and Krillin. 

“HEY! BULMA!” Krillin hoarsely whispered as she stomped into the faint moonlight, “DON’T YOU WANT TO HEAR THE REST OF OUR PLAN??”

Bulma pressed the top of her Bike capsule and it deployed with a loud BOM! “Ugh, no!” She said as she kicked the bike over to the ground and yanked out the rotator component, “I just want my stupid bike to work!!”

Bulma skillfully removed the head gasket, pulminator core and recycler from their stations deep within the heart of the bike and slipped them into her inside jacket pocket. She gave the handlebars a good shake to grind the bike a little deeper into the litter in the street. She felt a sudden sensation creep up her leg—of being trapped under her bike, of a large, orange hair man yanking her painfully by the arm and hoisting her in the air, the words he spit in her face, the sudden rush of darkness upon her assailant and its kind embrace as it hoarsely whispered GO into her ear. She was so absorbed in the memory that she startled violently when a man with a thick accent suddenly spoke, rupturing her temporary daydream. “Allo allo whats this? If it ain’t the ol damsel in distress in our very alley.”

Bulma spun around and tripped, falling clumsily on the with her back to the bike, “Oh, oh hi! I uhhh . . . I, you see, my bike—”

“That’s an old wrecker now ain’t it?” The little orange man said as he craned his neck around Bulma to get a better look at her bike, “that’s the kind what parents ‘and down to the brats when they ain’t got no money—the ol dad special, is it?”

“Well, it works!” Bulma said, curling her shoulder up defensively, feeling her brows knit together at the annoyance, “Except when it doesn’t. Tonight it just doesn’t, ok? I don’t know what’s wrong with it!”

“Oi no need to get all defensive. Ain’t no shame about it—we’re all poor here. Unless you’ve got a Capsule 9000 model in that hoi poi case of yours, you ain’t got nothin to stick to y’pride about.” He said as he reached around Bulma to grab the bike by the handlebars and set it upright. “My old man told me to eat shit when I asked for our old 9-for occulitum. Maybe yours spoiled you a bit in giving you this.”

Bulma took a step back as the man crouched down to the ground and peered into the engine. She swallowed the lump in her throat and felt it catch as he turned his face up to her and flashed a smile that was full of metal teeth, “It ain’t got no head to it, heh.” He said as he wiped his nose with the back of his grease covered wrist, jiggling the heavy, bright sliver septum piercing in his nose, his eyes burning with an intense stare that seemed to melt the heavy black eyeliner that was already melting off of his bottom eyelids. He had thick, white, bushy hair that was pulled tight against the center top of his head which was further slicked down by hardened gel with white tufts curling upwards like puffy devil’s horns. “ ‘ard to believe it even made it this far without blowin y’minge to kingdom come.”

“Yeah.” She said as the drunks in the alley suddenly scuffled off, “So are you . . . a mechanic?”

“Yea, you could say that.” He said, renewing his wicked smile, “Got me shop in the wall if you can keep a secret.” He said with a wink.

“How are we gonna get it inside if I can’t start it?”

“Psh that’s easy. All you need is a big fella.” 

“You got a big fella?” Bulma said, a slight flutter to her lashes as she looked down at the small man over her high, pouty cheeks.

“ ‘Course I do. Y’wanna see?” He said, adjusting himself with a generous tug to his prominent bulge just as a very tall alien with brilliant iridescent blue/purple skin emerged from the shadows. He stooped to fit into the tunnel that ran beneath the elevated tracks and lumbered menacingly towards the bike with a vacant look in his red eyes and a sneer on his strangely tiny face. “A right biggun he is. Ay Burter, show t’lady the door.” 

The striking blue alien reached a clawed hand towards the bike and dragged it towards a set of double iron doors that were green with age, streaked with crackles of orange oxidation from the oily, watery tears leaking down from the elevated track. The doors opened with a heavy, scraping, metallic whine, scratching across the surface of the street until they clicked into place, revealing a large hanger full of cars and bikes and an older style double decker bus that was heavily tattooed all over in alien graffiti with scenes from another planet painted along the side in bright, vibrant, life-like pictures like a painting in a mobile cathedral. 

“Put it on the op’n bay, mate. There’s a good lad.” The orange man said as the other lifted the bike by the midsection and placed it squarely on a lighted table. “Now, you needn’t worry your pretty head about this ol screama. These types are simple animals, really—either the energy’s flooding through the thorax or it’s fucked. Ay Burter, shut the doors will ya. That’s a draft that could knock a flea off the ass of a polar bear.”

“Oh, no, wait.” Bulma said as Burter pushed the doors then paused, “You know I . . . I just . . . I’m here alone and . . .”

“Ah ah—you ain’t gotta say it. Couple of weirdos in a dark alley in the middle of the night elbow deep in motorcycle guts, not a lot of f’males wanna be all alone . . . confined t’where nobody gonna hear em scream. Y’lucky we got ‘ere when we did. Them cats in the alleyways wouldn’t have no scruples in stranglin’ ya dead before rapin’ ya. Whereas me,” He said, looking Bulma up and down from the tips of her Capsule boots to the part in her blue, wavy hair, “I’ll at least get’cha bike fixed before I try any of that.” He said with a wink, reaching deep into the empty space where the rotator used to be. “Ayyyyyyyyyy there’s ya problem. Now how on earth did that manage t’get loose?”

Bulma hooked her hair behind her ear and subtly rubbed her palm over the rotator stashed in her pocket. “What? What is it?” 

“Good ol rotator coupling. Usually they’re nested in there all nice and tight like, but yours . . . yours has gone straight off. Now fortunate for a good little street girl like you, I just ‘appened to ‘ave a rotator or three.”

Bulma wrapped her arms around herself a little tighter as the little orange man took a seat on a nearby garage stool and kicked hard against the floor, zooming and spinning clownishly to a nearby workbench that was littered with tools and parts, not unlike her own workbench at home. “So does it take long to replace a rotation cuplink or whatever you call it?” She said as her fingers traced over the shape of the parts from the other side of her interior jacket pocket.

“Not long. If ‘ats the only thing whats wrong with it. AY BURTER, leave that door alone, mate!!” He shouted over to the massive blue alien as he pushed the doors closed a little more. “You have to forgive him. He ain’t tryin to make y’ feel trapped, he just don’t like the cold, that’s all.”

“Cold? It’s like 60 degrees outside.”

“He’s from a warm planet, one that ani’t got no ice caps to it, just heat and palms. Even the hottest place on your pla’et ain’t warm enough for the likes of him. If it were up to ‘im we’d be busy stewin in a sauna in this here shop. That’s why I got ‘im the bus—he can close the doors nice n tight and crank the heat up as high as he’d like, wouldn’t make no difference to me. He just crawls in on his belly and curls up in it. His own pretty lit’le den.”

“And this picture . . . on the side?” Bulma said as she approached the painted side of the bus, “What’s this?”

“A little art by yours truly.”

“And what does it depict?”

The little orange man raised his head and looked over his shoulder, making eye contact with Bulma briefly before scrolling over the bus flank mural and back down again to the part in his hand. “The events on Namek.”

“You were there?”

“Yes of course we was there!” He said with a sudden kind of sarcastic exasperation to his voice, “Ain’t no strays on this planet what wasn’t in the events on Namek in some ways or another.”

“So . . . . what happened up there?” Bulma said as she tried to make sense of the wildly psychedelic picture before her, “I-I-I-mean I . . . I was busy droppin’ out of school at that time, you know. I don’t know much of nothin about what went on.”

“A tragedy to the Namekians that’s for sure. Wasn’t my planet but . . . when you witness someone elses’ apocalypse, it does something to ya, you know? Whole planet just caved in on itself, all on account of a couple Saiyans. It’s a good thing Frieza had the whole lot of them destroyed if you asked me—whole damn race was insane . . . power hungry . . . bunch of mad monkey blokes always out lookin’ for the next bloody fight. Imagine standing on the surface of a planet just like this one, and the ‘ole surface of it just started to tear apart and shred like paper—every where you run, everywhere you fly or dig or swim just disintigratin’ . . . and then you find it’s just these two goin’ at it like a couple of li’le kids. Ay if only I’da left before—” He said as his voice trailed off softly.

Bulma turned her head over her shoulder to see the little orange man paused as if frozen in time. For a moment, she wondered if perhaps she had accidently deployed the device—she quickly brought her hand up to her breast pocket, and just as she dipped her fingers in the Orange man lifted his head and lit up his crazed metallic smile again. “Whatcha got there, love?” He said with a lick of his pierced lips.

“Oh just—cigarettes. Mind if I light up?”

The little orange man gave a subtle tilt of his head. “Go on then. Sexy gal. All the bad ones on this planet smoke I hear. Just don’t let y’ pot ash hit the grease lest the whole place go BOOM!” He said with a dramatic raise of both his arms followed by an unsettling and suddenly loud laugh. 

Bulma quickly dashed her hand to her other breast pocket and pulled out a cigarette, noticing how the spark in the small man’s eyes seemed to throb as she struck a flame from the lighter. She took a quick drag off her cigarette and turned her attention back towards the painting, allowing herself to become immersed in the fractured beauty of it as the relaxing wave of nicotine flooded through her body. Among the swirling, undulating lines of the painting, she could just make out a surface covered in thick yellow grasses, tall, tall trees with round clusters of blue green leaves, high cliffs with colorful ribbons of differing rock, red planets visible in the green sky. And on the ground two vaguely men-like shapes lunging for one another in a blur of orange and black and blue and white with only the arms and eyes and gnashed teeth in sharp focus. The scene was interrupted by another of a village of round houses that were bone white and with little green windows and odd spikes like natural horns growing out of the sides and roofs. In one panel they were whole, the next exploding, crumbling, green robed bodies scattered all throughout their courtyards and farming fields. In the next panel, Bulma’s eyes widened just a little as a gloved, mostly hidden hand held a vivid and deep orange 4 starred Dragon Ball, so vivid that it could have only have been painted in Namekian paint, urging Bulma to touch it to make sure it wasn’t real. But in the next panel, there was no color at all—A single figure appeared to float in the white air, itself blacker than the blackest black against the varying shades of dark and heather gray that composed the space landscape, arms and legs hanging limp, a handful of differing aliens below it with their arms upraised, a leaf like object in the hand of an insectoid alien. The figure appeared in the vacuum of space with nebulas billowing all around it and yet the stars were scattered around as though they were afraid.

“AND THAT BLOKE RIGHT THERE—” The orange man said as he slammed his palm flat against the painting just to the side of Bulma’s face, giving her a violent start, “That mother fucker, oh I feel sorry for that one! Oh he got what he deserved one-hundred-per-cent!!” He said with a laugh so close to her ear that she could hear the breaths he took in between, “It was great fun GREAT FUN to torture the little cunt . . . so fuckin cocky . . . he weren’t nothin’ more than a fuckin’ slave, he had not a goddamn thing to be proud about. But then . . . Ah, but then . . . “

Bulma drew back as the little orange man hit himself in the head repeatedly with the heel of his palm, each time with a disturbing laugh and a smile so wide that his metallic tooth guard nearly fell out of his mouth, “Then what?”

“What?”

“You were just telling a story and . . . .” She said, shaking her head.

The orange man gave a strangely misplaced chuckle. “. . . . You got a ciggy for me too honey?” he said, making a smoking motion by putting two fingers to his lips and pulling them away.

Bulma consciously stopped herself from rolling her eyes and dipped her hand back into her breast pocket with the little orange man snatching the cigarette from her fingers almost as soon as it was produced. He pressed the trigger on a cart-mounted propane torch and lit it, taking a deep hit off the cigarette as soon as the end was lit. “Ahhhhh you know though, this planet does have its charms. Pretty Sheilas . . . plenty of water . . . police who don’t give a fuck.” He said as he jammed the rotator in place and set a ratchet to it in several places to tighten it in. 

“Well, I mean, some of them do.” Bulma said, flicking her ash to a bald space on the concrete floor. 

“Nah fuck those assholes, fuck the whole lot of em. Police is the same all over this universe—bunch of pigs gorging themselves on people’s bad choices. Even as much of a joke as the galactic patrol are, they were still a pain in the arse for us when we was off stealin space pods, eh Burter?” he said as the great blue-purple alien gave a smallish chuckle. “But these police here, they’re a joke and they know they’re a joke. They know they can’t do shit against people what can instantly transport or make beams of light energy from they ‘ands, so what’s the use . . . certainly can’t do anything about an 8ft tall wall of flesh like ol Burter o’er here. He can look em right in the face as he’s buggerin’ a brand new capsule wagon, give a lil nod of his ‘ead and they just let him strollllllll on by like whoopty doo!” 

Bulma swallowed the lump in her throat. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, quickly swiping all other notifications off the top screen except for the messages from Krillin. She squashed her thumb down to his message and tapped the empty reply field, but there was something about the painting, something that seemed to call her attention away from pixels to paint, away from safety of Krillin and Piccolo and deeper into the unknown. She slowly her face over her shoulder, back towards the painting on the bus, her eyes searching the psychedelic folds of scenery, hungry for any small detail that may have gone unnoticed, finding herself instead drawn to the figure in black, how lonely it seemed, how tortured, how empty and blank. 

“Oi if we only had a hit of the ol’ Liganoon . . . we could be starin at that ol picture . . . make it come alive!!” Jeuice said with a dramatic spread of his fingers.

“It . . . certainly tells a story.”

“Aye . . . story most humans don’t know.”

“When you said this guy got what he deserved, what was it?” Bulma said, pointing to the picture of the figure in black.

Jeuice hesitantly cracked a slow and wicked smile. He gave a nervous chuckle and paced lightly back and forth in front of the bike before approaching the painting again, “Well uhh, you see, you see this here ball thing? Do you know what that is?”

“……It’s a dragon ball.”

“Yeah . . . yes it is. Yes it most certainly is. And um . . . do you know what they’re used for?”

Bulma took the last drag off her cigarette and put it out on the ground, letting it drop from her fingers before smushing it out with the tip of her tattered red shoe, “I dunno, I just thought they were rare or something.” She replied, trying her best to sound dumb.

“Not really all that rare, babe—every planet that has a guardian has em, including this one if you can believe that. This ol backwater, muddy piece of dirt.” The little orange man said, sneaking a quick hit off his quickly dwindling cigarette, “They’re for making wishes. You see, you gather ‘em all up and put ‘em in a lil circle, right? Then you say the magic words and your wishes get granted, that’s what they do, that’s what they’re used for.”

“Oh. Oh wow you don’t say. And what’s that got to do with him?”

“You know that old saying, the old one, you know . . . heard it on every planet I’ve ever been on, every galaxy I’ve ever been in. It’s always a nice little way for the old timers to shit all over the hopes and dreams and aspirations of young people, you know . . . What they say, all dramatic like, _Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it_.”

“So you’re saying this guy got his wish?”

“G R A N T E D” Jeuice said in a low, dramatic voice, “and ol’ Porunga din’t know no better. He didn’t know if the guy was good or bad, or that he was nothin but a big loser without a prayer in the world of defeating hi---oh, that’s odd.” He said, pointing to an empty spot in the painting, “I could ‘ave swore I added him in. Oh what a thing to forget.” He said, throwing himself to the ground so that he slid across the garage floor on his knees to a nearby tool chest, quickly unlocking the thin drawers, producing a beat up canister of airbrush paint that he slapped into a vaguely gun shaped nozzle. He jumped up from the floor and gave the airbrush two quick squirts before dusting it over the blank space in the painting.

Bulma glanced at the screen of her phone, torn between reading Krillin’s frantic messages and the figure that was materializing on the bus from his rushed yet genius strokes. The figure hovered in mid air with its legs pressed together, feet pointed towards the disintegrating surface of Namek. _Bulma what’s happening in there?_ Jeuice worked his way up to the chest of the figure, then the arms, which were outstretched, palms up, power magnetized towards its hands with particles of the Namekian surface swirling all around them. _He’s getting restless_. Jeuice reached into his pockets and several silver tubes fell out, “Ay yo there’s a slippery fella. ‘Ats the only one I need.” He said as he shoved the tube into a port just behind the canister of the airbrush, making wide, sloppy circles from the shoulders of the figure with three sharp points to the left, right and directly up. “This should ‘ave been your future, yes it should ‘ave.” Jeuice said as he painted the upright hair of the figure in the same brilliant shade of white, “I only paint when it comes back to me, and that I remember. Porunga . . . . Porunga always granted three wishes, you see. One for HIM—” he said, pointing the nozzle of the airbrush towards the figure in black and giving it a quick misting with it, “one for HIM” he said, switching the white cartridge out quickly for another, a scattering of fine flesh colored paint conjuring a thin, vaguely heart shaped face, “Then there weren’t no more wishes. There weren’t no more NAMEK!!” he shouted as Bulma’s blood raced through her veins, “THEY COULD HAVE WISHED THEM BOTH AWAY!! THEM NAMEKIANS COULD HAVE WISHED BACK THEY OWN PLA’NET, IT WAS RIGHT THERE!! IT WAS READY FOR THEM!! BUT. THEY. JUST. KEPT. AT. IT!!!!” he said, placing the finishing the figure in full.

Bulma gave a hard gasp, flinching so hard that the phone slipped from her hand to the concrete floor. It hit with a hard and audible slap that seemed to echo off the cold concrete walls more loudly than it should have, with both Jeuice and Burter turning their heads towards her as though it was the first either had ever seen of her. “Whatcha got there, love?” Jeuice growled, his demeanor turning suddenly dark as he glared at Bulma from under his thick furled eyebrows, the side of his mouth curling and tucking up under his sharply pointed nose.

“I . . . I . . . I just need to let them I know I was ok.” Bulma replied weakly. Slowly and steadily she bent over to pick up the phone, dipping her hand down to scoop it up, but just as her fingertips touched the phone’s smooth, black screen she felt a sudden rush of air blow up from the floor that was so strong it knocked her off of her feet. She hit the floor on her hip and shot her hand out to where the phone should have been, but the phone was gone! She flattened herself against the floor and peered under the tables and benches, searching for her lifeline to Krillin only to be met by a pair of massive booted feet. She followed them with an upward glance, feeling her heart thump furiously at the sight of Burter’s smug, smiling face.

“Oi, Ole Burter here is fast, fastest in the universe. A right blue hurricane. Look at the door why don’t cha?” Jeuice said with a sneer, motioning with his head to the door that was not only shut but locked in place by three heavy bolts. “Now then what’s it gonna be princess? You gonna scream so that short piece of shit outside can hear you?” he said with a smile that grew broad and wicked, tilting his head slightly as he nodded it to shake the thick, heavy septum piercing in this nose, “Whatcha think I di’nt notice? I knew you were baiting me . . . ain’t no damsel in distress in this part of town, else they’d be dead, beaten, raped or robbed, and now . . . now it’s not really so much a choice as which one we’re gonna do to you, it’s what order we’re gonna do ‘em in.”

“You guys think I’m helpless, is that it?” Bulma said, her face taking on a wicked sneer of it’s own as she pushed herself up from the cold and dusty floor, “Well let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth!!” she said, slipping the time device from its hiding place, clicking the pause feature just as Jeuice and Burter closed in on her, a deafening silence, dust suspended in mid air, light from the florescent bulbs above oddly muted in mid flicker. Bulma smiled to herself and bit her lower lip. She scooted out from underneath the clawing fingers of Burter and Jeuice, plucking her phone from a tiny pocket built into Burter’s armor. She tapped the screen just as she had done hundreds of times and swiped her thumb up the slick surface, but the device remained frozen, locked in distorted, digital confusion. “That’s fine. I don’t need you either.” She said, voice stunted in the intimate, absolute silence of frozen time, tucking the phone back into her jacket as she took a quick survey of the room. She giggled to herself as she trotted to the propane torch that Jeuice had used to light his cigarette, unlocking the casters of the cart it was mounted to with her foot, positioning it just behind Jeuice’s ass. She ran back to the workbench and opened cabinets and drawers, emptying them on the floor. “There’s gotta be something in here for the big guy, come on Bulma THINK!” 

Bulma jerked open the last cabinet door and felt her heart leap up with devilish glee—a treasure trove of liquid nitrogen for servicing air condition units in cars filled the shelves to the brim. She filled her arms with the icy blue canisters, taping them together sloppily with a strip of duct tape ripped from Jeuice’s bench. She placed a heavy duty rubber band around all the triggers of the canisters and the propane torch, trotting back midway to the door just as her time stopping device dwindled down to its last 10 available seconds. “Beaten, robbed or raped? How ‘bout NEITHER!” She said, becoming slowly aware of a strange rumbling building in strength in the silence of stopped time. She turned the device over in her hand, and just as the counter flipped from 1 to 0, Vegeta’s large fist burst through the brick wall and swiped towards her, narrowly missing her just as Jeuice and Burter met their fates at the hot/cold ends of Bulma’s booby trap. They gave a simultaneous screech as Vegeta reached deeper into the room, seemingly feeling around for something to grab. “HA! You think that’s bad, wait till he gets ahold of y------”

All at once, Vegeta’s great ape hand swallowed Bulma up and yanked her outside, bringing her close to his shocked and enraged face, “WHAT WAS THAT??? DID YOU DO?!?!”

“What was what???” Bulma squeaked.

“THAT!!! YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M SPEAKING OF, DON’T TOY WITH ME WOMAN!!”

“What the—WHAT ARE YOU YELLING AT ME FOR??? WE’RE HERE TO GET THEM!!!” she screeched, her anger growing exponentially as she glanced down to the gaping hole in the garage wall where Burter’s bus was quickly making its exit. “I AM ALLOWED TO DEFEND MYSELF AND THEY ARE GETTING AWAY!!!”

Vegeta pointed his finger towards Bulma’s face. “YOU. CANNOT. MANIPULATE. TIME!!! CANNOT!!!”

Piccolo brought himself to Bulma and Vegeta’s level, “Ugh if you two are otherwise engaged in a lover’s quarrel, I’ll go after them myself!” he said, flying after the bus through the dark city streets.

“WHY WAS IT OK FOR GROGURT OR GROGU OR OR OR WHATEVER HIS NAME WAS BUT NOT OK FOR ME?? WHAT, I FIND SOMETHING THAT EVENS THE SCORE BETWEEN US WEAK HUMANS AND YOU ALIENS AND SUDDENLY I’M THE BAD GUY??”

“GULDO’S POWER WAS ORGANIC TO HIS SPECIES, IT IS *NOT* FOR YOU!!! IT . . . . IS A SIN!!!” Vegeta hissed, making a motion with his free hand as if to shush her, “JUST . . . PUT IT AWAY! GET ON AND DON’T LET GO!”

Bulma quickly scrambled to Vegeta’s back, clinging with the insides of her knees pressed against his back and her arms encircling his neck as the great ape quickly took moved hand over hand up the nearest building, leaping effortlessly in silent agility to the next one, following the energy of Piccolo, Jeuice and Burter as they zig zagged through the square structures of man, each concrete wall obstructing and frustrating Vegeta’s senses. He scrambled to the rooftop and jumped jumped jumped until the Namekian’s repugnantly cold energy signature came creeping up from the street like a cooly billowing fog. “PICCOLO, BACK THIS WAY! BRING THEM BACK THIS WAY!” Vegeta barked.

Piccolo gave a groan. “It’s hardly a surprise to the bad guys when a GIANT MONKEY IS BARKING OUT HIS PLANS TO LAY A TRAP!!! Though I doubt they heard it with as loud as the music is in there!” He said as he intensified his flying speed, bringing his shoulder to the side of the bus opposite of the driver and nudging it to the left, into a street leading back to the tracks.

Inside the bus, Burter grasped the giant, modified steering wheel, righting the bus as it threatened to tilt over with a jerk and a stomp of his giant, club like foot against the floor. He reached over and turned the volume up on the thumping techno rave that thumped through the bus in time to the colorful, LED lights, fuzzy purple dice swinging from the rear view mirror and Jeuice climbing the stairs to the upper level with both hands full of burgeoning energy. “Gettin’ a little rough, is he? Fuckin green skin CUNT!! TAKE THAT!” Jeuice said, thrusting his hands in Piccolo’s direction, issuing two white energy balls that chased each other in a helix patten, landing right in the center of Piccolo’s chest. 

Piccolo reeled back. He put his hand to his chest and patted out the singed fabric of his tunic. “Urg You BASTARD! I’m not waiting for Vegeta to finish you off, I’m going to take care of you MYSELF!” 

Jeuice answered with two upraised middle fingers. “Ha ha ha, WONTCHA COME AT ME? HERE HAVE SOME MORE!!” 

The little orange man gathered his energy in his hands and slammed them together, forming a ball so large and powerful that it hummed even louder than the music being broadcast by the bus. With great effort, he heaved the powerful energy ball towards Piccolo, who quickly dismissed it with a swipe of his hand, hitting the side of a parking garage with a loud, collapsing concrete layers on themselves like slices of bread falling to a plate. Piccolo raised his hand to his forehead. His antennas sparked, his lips arched in a snarl, revealing his pointed canine teeth. He wound up a loud bellow from deep within his throat, but just as he was ready to issue attack, the bus took a sudden hairpin turn, busting through a flimsy security gate and traveling up a service ramp to the elevated track. The bus shook violently as it careened off the steel rails and into the trench of wooden ties, with Burter inside merely ducking his head in time to the rumble as though it were part of the beat of the makeshift rave inside. Jeuice grabbed hold of a seat on the upper level and wrenched it from its bolts. He threw it in Piccolo’s direction, laughing maniacally as the Namekian barely dodged it. “C’MON THEN LAD! HAVE ANOTHER!!!” Jeuice shouted as he pulled up seats like daisies out of a meadow and thew them Piccolo one after the other with each failed attempt sending seats bouncing and flying over the side. They came to an intersection that split into a wide trefoil like shape where several tracks met and changed and old trains slept in gowns of glittering green corrosion. Burter banked the bus hard in the trefoil’s center, drifting with sparks flying where the bottom of the bus met the metal tracks, turning right again, approaching the busted up Capsule Corp building from its flank. Jeuice raced to the front of the bus and jumped to a small platform meant for the bus’ tour guide. He let loose a wild howl and screamed “ROCK N ROLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL” before turning around, only to have his nose met by Piccolo’s fist with the perfect round thick ring in his nose punching a hole through his front teeth. 

The city streets below the elevated track filled with sirens and flashing lights. Burter renewed his grip on the steering wheel and pushed the gas to the floor, racing down a long stretch of track where a train was speedily winding around a distant curve. But on top of the bus, Jeuice struggled to return Piccolo’s blows, unable to see through his busted up and bloodied face. Out of desperation he brought the energy of his body to his knuckles and swung inward to connect with Piccolo, but the Namekian was fast and alert—he turned and hooked his fist deep into Jeuice’s rib cage until the little orange man’s face ducked over his shoulder, his lips not far from Piccolo’s ear. “How-how could you work with him . . . after what he did to your people??”

“My business . . . and mine alone!” Piccolo said as he finished throwing his punch by pitching Jeuice over the side of the tracks and following it all the way through until Jeuice’s heart and spine and blood and veins were pulverized into the asphalt. Piccolo swooped up into the sky just as the police convoy caught up to the pile of orange flesh, alighting on the top of the bus as it threatened to hit the train head on. “IT’S OVER BURTER! DON’T TRY TO LOCK HORNS WITH A TRAIN, YOU WON’T WIN!!”

Burter pressed a button on the roof of the bus. From out of a hidden compartment on the face of the bus, a makeshift cowcatcher outfitted with spikes appeared, lowering to the track, thrusting forward on two iron arms that slid out from beneath the bus. He pressed another button on the dash of the bus and the thumping of his music turned into a boom that was deafening and disorienting to Piccolo’s sensitive Namekian ears. Piccolo punched down through the floor of the 2nd level of the bus, making a hole just above Burter’s head. Piccolo reached down as if to lift Burter from his seat, forgetting Burter’s sheer size and speed. The purple alien grabbed Piccolo by his Tunic and slammed him down into the dashboard of the bus, pressing his face against the windshield as the train quickly grew near. “It ain’t about winnin.” Burter said in a deep and dopey voice, “Die Namekian Scum!”

The train blew its horn. Burter pressed his hand hard into Piccolo’s back, crushing him into the plastic and gadgets that populated the bus’s dash. Just as the bus and train came within a few feet of each other, Vegeta erupted from beneath the track, busting the railroad apart with his head and shoulders. He gave a roar, his massive, heavy, sharp toothed jaws dripping with saliva as his red eyes flashed fiercely towards the bus. He hooked his hand around the still intact edge of the track and caught hold of the train, lifting it before making impact with the bus. 

“DON’T HURT THEM! SET IT DOWN ON THE STREET!!” Bulma called from the safety of the nearby balcony Vegeta had set her down on.

“T’ch obviously!” Vegeta scoffed as he set the train full of screaming passengers down on the police filled street below with Officer Krillin bravely leading the men and women in uniform to swarm the train cars and pull people to safety. Vegeta climbed up through the hole in the elevated track. He crouched in the center of the trefoil and ducked his head in all directions, searching for the bus as the beat of the music reverbed off the concrete buildings all around. From the corner of his eye Vegeta caught a stray blue light—his arm shot out down the dark corridor and grabbed the bus by the middle, pulling it back into the trefoil, raising it to his face. He only had time enough to turn the bus over and see that it was empty before it exploded in his hand, with cinders and shrapnel assaulting his face and burning holes in the sleeves of his battle suit before it was dropped to the edge of the elevated track, teetering momentarily before dropping to the street below. 

As the great Ozaru quickly rubbed his hands over his arms and face, Bulma grabbed the time device and opened the interface. “C’mon Bulma how do we do this? HOW?!?” She said as she plucked her tiny screwdriver from its pouch within her cargo shorts and set it to the guts of the device. In the dark chaos of the night, on someone else’s balcony, a great ape stumbling and howling in pain below, Bulma’s brain clocked into overdrive, redirecting the throbbing dark matter within its kidney shaped cell to secondary chamber that she had not yet reinforced, driving it in an unnatural direction until it seemed to crawl over the unit in a slow, sticky flow. She glanced downward—Vegeta was laying on his hip on the track, curled slightly around himself in agony, pressing the heel of his palm into his eye where a piece of the bus had lodged itself, with Burter stalking forward. He raised his arms, spread his claws and flexed them in and out before materializing to the left, then again to the right, a thin blue afterimage trailing between positions. Suddenly his switching came to center. He zipped forward at super sonic speed and, carrying the force of his massive velocity with him, plunged both sets of his claws deep into Vegeta’s heart, opening the shell of his Saiyan armor with a loud crack. 

Bulma gave a choked cry. She snapped the device shut, struggling in the shake of her nerves to clasp the two sides of the clamshell before climbing to the edge of the balcony where Piccolo swooped up to meet her. “Get me down to him!! NOW!!!” she barked out, leaping to Piccolo’s back.

“I’m going to carve your heart out!!” Burter cried as he shoved his hands deeper into the Ozaru’s chest, but just as Bulma leaped from Piccolo’s back, mid air, mid night, mid screaming chaotic humans below, mid Vegeta crying out for his life, Bulma pushed the plunger on the device, and time reversed, events slowly rewinding themselves until Bulma found herself back on the balcony with only a drowsy, dreamy recollection of what she had to do to turn direct again. She pushed the plunger a second time, and before Vegeta could turn the bus over in his hand, Bulma screamed, “VEGETA THROW THE BUS!!!!”

The great ape quickly flung the bus into the air. It exploded in a bright orange ball of fire with great chunks of smoldering pieces, some hitting the tops of skyscrapers, others plunking and pinging their way to the streets below, but as Vegeta shifted himself to face forward again, he felt a good sized blue fist set itself squarely into his wrist. He had only time enough to meet Burter red eye to red eye until he took a swipe with his other hand, scooping up only empty air as Burter quickly manuevered away from his swat. Burter moved in with his claws extended once again, zooming towards his opponent’s heart. But Vegeta, out of some strange sense of instinct or déjà vu, quickly brought his hand to the center of his chest and snatched Burter up in midair with a secure squeeze of his hand. “THAT won’t be happening THIS time,” He said with narrowed eyes glancing over his shoulder to Bulma, who was still holding the shaking, burning device in her hand. “This time, you DIE WITH HIM!!” Vegeta spat out as he leaped with his short, ape legs a short distance into the air before bringing Burter into the ground beside Jeuice in concrete shattering power. 

The crowd of humans shot off into the alleys and overpasses. The great ape took deep breaths. He felt the life force of the alien beneath his fist cease to be, another signature on a cosmic contract, another relic of the past gone. But high above the elevated track he heard a faint and tiny “ow” that filled him with a strange and sudden dread, negating any feeling of the satisfaction of victory. He leaped up through the hole in the tracks again and set his palms to the edge of the building where Bulma remained stationed in the balcony. Her gasp turned into a groan that gurgled deep behind her gritted teeth, and when Vegeta was finally high enough to peer over the balcony’s side, he found her laying on her hip, curled around herself in pain, her right hand holding her left wrist as the eerie purple of dark matter leaked from the busted device burned its way down from her palm. “T’ch, this is EXACTLY why you should not have . . . “

“Oh c’mon it’s . . . it’s just . . . a tiny burn.” She said, pushing herself off the balcony floor as the pain of the burn shot down her arm, “Gagh but why does it burn so much??”

“Because you were FOOLING with something you had NO BUSINESS fooling with!!” He said, glancing down to the street below where Officer Krillin was bringing order to chaos, comforting survivors, directing firemen to the still burning wreck of Burter’s bus, the tiny human stopping just long enough to glance upward and give the great Ozaru a knowing nod of his head. “Come on, we have no time to lose. Wrap the device in your jacket, that should slow it down temporarily.”

Bulma slipped her jacket from her shoulders and wrapped the device snuggly inside. She placed it in her lap as the great Ozaru scooped her out of the balcony, his grip loose and mindful, allowing her a second’s glance of the destruction, chaos and terror below before enclosing her in the darkness of his fist with pain burning like an purple ember in her hand.

“I want absolutely no mention of what you are about to experience made to any living soul on this planet or otherwise. NONE!” he said, shaking his finger down to her face as she sat on the printing press floor. 

“Vegeta . . . ugh Vegeta I think . . . I think I need to go to the hospital!” She eeked out quietly as the burn in her hand and arm grew darker and more intense, “It . . . it feels like it’s eating me down to the bone!!”

“Of course it does, because it is. You have dark matter poisoning . . . its pushing through your flesh and blood just as it pushes the expansion of the universe. The fact that you’re even still alive is remarkable, now hold still.” He said, sitting with his stubby ape legs encircling her, flexing his fingers as if trying to remember how to play an instrument or ride a bicycle.

“Vegeta I’m serious,” she said as her breathing became ragged and rapid, “I feel like I’m about to DIE!!!! I NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL!!”

“It’s a wonder it didn’t turn you inside out now STOP PANICKING I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING.”

“DON’T YELL AT ME!!!”

“STOP YELLING AT ME THIS ISN’T AN EASY THING FOR ME TO DO NOW LET ME THINK!!!” he said.

“You just said you knew what you were doing!” she said as tears welled up in her eyes, “for Kai’s sake just call emergency please!!!”

Vegeta patted his hands down over her, forming a kind of tent with his hands as the roof and his encircled legs as the walls. She felt a flood of energy wash over her, warm and soothing, lessening the burn, eliminating the escalating panic she was feeling inside and replacing it with the euphoria of relief. She pulled her arm away from its tightly held position to her body and looked down at it, watching the glowing purple energy shrink, rescinding to its original drop spot in the palm of her hand, shrunk but not gone. As the great ape lifted his hands, she sat up and stared into the inert purple dot formed in the hollow of her hand, barely taking notice of how spent Vegeta seemed to be. “You . . . you healed me.”

“A technique I learned from the Yardrat . . . part of what they call spirit control.” He said, leaning against the brick wall of the abandoned printing press. “I was already familiar with the basics--spirit control is what has allowed the royal family to remain in control of the Ozaru form since the time of Vegeta the 2nd. Not a pleasant activity. Not something I wish to remember, harsh training that it was. Errrg the shame of having to . . . use it for such means.” He said with a snarl, crossing his arms and tucking his hands into his armpits. 

“And you used it . . . to save an insignificant human.” She said as she relaxed back into his furry leg.

“T’ch . . . not . . . insignificant.” He said, shifting his legs around slightly, “Not done out of a feeling of fondness either, just . . . I know what it feels like, and I would not wish another being to suffer as I did. What has transpired should be kept between you and me. I am a warrior, not soft.” he said with a barely perceptible snarl, his chin nestling into his chest as he closed his eyes to rest. “I was meant to destroy, not to heal.”

“Yeah, Alright. Whatever you say, badman.” She replied with a smile he did not see, nestling into his black fur with a purple scar on her hand and a bright sense of gratitude glowing in her heart. 


End file.
